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HARVARD COLLEGE BY AN 
OXONIAN 



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isJC.Ua h./A^r^ 



HARVARD COLLEGE BY 
AN OXONIAN 



BY 



GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L. 

Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford 




" There is a world elsewhere " 

— CORIOLANUS 



MACMILLAN AND CO. 

AND LONDON 
1894 

All rights reserved 



./ 



/ 



K- 



J) 



Copyright, 1894, 
By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



KortoooU iirrss : 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 

Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



TO 

Justin WBhmx, 3L3L.©, 

LIBRARIAN OF HARVARD COLLEGE 

AS A SLIGHT TOKEN 

OF 

MY RESPECT FOR HIS LEARNING 

AND OF 

MY GRATITUDE FOR HIS KINDNESS 

TO MY WIFE AND MYSELF 

DURING OUR RESIDENCE IN CAMBRIDGE 

MASSACHUSETTS 

^ijis Book IS ©cnicatcU 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Growth of Harvard. — The Infant College. — Early Gifts and 
Bequests. — " A Constellation of Benefactors." — Grants of Public 
Money. — The Revolutionary War. — Modern Benefactors. — 
Founders of Families and Founders of University . . . i 

CHAPTER H. 

The P'oundation of Harvard. — Cambridge in England and Cambridge 
in New England. — " Fair Harvard." — Emmanuel College. — The 
Washington Elm. — General Washington a Doctor of Laws. — 
The University at Concord. — An Overbearing Treasurer, — Har- 
vard and Slavery . . . . . . . . . .23 

CHAPTER HI. 

Religious Liberty. — The Divinity School. — The College Chapel. — 
The Dudleian Lectures. — The English Liturgy , . . .42 

CHAPTER IV. 

Punishments and Fines. — "The Ancient Customs." — Fagging and 
" Hazing." — Tutors and Undergraduates. — Rebellions . . 55 

CHAPTER V. 

Odd Characters. — Changes of Names of Places. — Commencement 
Day. — Lafayette. — Russian Naval Officers. — Oxford Commem- 
oration. — The Association of the Alumni. — The Classes. — The 
After-dinner Speeches ......... 77 

vii 



viii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

Phi Beta Day. — Foundation of the Society. — Emerson's Oration in 
1837. — Charles Sumner. — The Meeting and the Dinner . . 107 



CHAPTER Vn. 

Class Day. — Its Origin and Growth. — Orators, Poets, and Odists. — 
The New England Summer. — The "Spreads." — The Exercises 
at the Tree . . . . . . . . . . .120 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Undergraduates. — Harvardians and Oxonians contrasted. — The 
Athletic Craze. — A Baseball Match. — Games regulated by the 
Governing Body of the University. — President Eliot's Report . 134 



CHAPTER IX. 

Caps and Gowns. — Harvard College and University. — The Dormi- 
tories. — Room Rents. — Students' Life Seventy Years Ago. — 
Memorial Hall \ca 



CHAPTER X. 

A Visit to Three Dormitories. — Dining Clubs. — The Liquor LaM^. — 
Baths. — Signs and " Shingles." — Clubs. — Politics. — Christmas. 
— A Student's Library 171 



CHAPTER XI. 

Harvard " Boys." — " Harvard Indifference." — Harvard and Yale. 
— Honest Poverty. — Oxford Servitors. — Poor Students. — 
" Money Aids " . . . . , . . . , ^ 185 



CONTENTS. ix 



CHAPTER XII. 

PAGE 

From a College to a University. —George Ticknor. — Influence of 
Germany. — Oxford Colleges Forty Years Ago. — Provincialism. — 
Foundation of New Schools at Harvard. — Duties of Professors . 209 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The Elective System. — American Schools. — The Study of Greek at 
Oxford and Cambridge. — Examinations and Prizes. — The Grad- 
uate School 



227 



CHAPTER XIV. 

The Law School. — Nathan Dane. — Joseph Story. — Professor 
Langdell. — The Law Library. — The Law Review . . .253 



CHAPTER XV. 
The Lawrence Scientific School. — Special Students .... 266 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Radcliffe College.— The Harvard Annex 273 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Library. — Gifts from England. — The Fire of 1764. —Gore 
Hall. — The Bequests of Prescott, Sumner, and Carlyle. — J. L. 
Sibley. — Dr. Justin Winsor 285 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Government of Harvard. — The Charter. —The Overseers.— 
The Corporation, Church, and State. — The Faculty. — The Pres- 
ident. — The Professors. — Oxford and Harvard .... 297 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

PAGE 

Graduate Schools in Oxford and Cambridge. — Respublica Litei-a- 
toriim. — American Students in English Universities. — The Old 
Home . . . , . . . . . . , .317 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Charles William Eliot, President .... Frontispiece 
First Harvard Hall, built in 1682 . . Vignette on title-page — 
Harvard College in 1726 Facing page 4 



Holden Chapel . . . , 

Harvard College. The Second Centennial Cel- 
ebration, 1836 

The Wadsworth House 

The Yard 

The Hemenway Gymnasium 

Memorial Hall 

The College Gate 

Austin Hall 

The Museum of Comparative ZoSlogy . 

The Library, Gore Hall . . c . . 

Sever Hall ........ 



12 

26 ^ 
86 
122 — 

150 

169 

200 ^- 

254 "-' 
266 i— 
289 
304 



XI 



CHAPTER I. 

The Growth of Harvard. — The Infant College. — Early Gifts and Be- 
quests. — "A Constellation of Benefactors." — Grants of Public Money. 
— The Revolutionary War. — Modern Benefactors. — Founders of 
Families and P'ounders of University. 

IN the summer and early autumn of last year, I spent in all 
nearly two months in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the seat 
of Harvard College, the first and the oldest of American 
universities. A young graduate of the College, with whom I 
had fallen into talk on my outward voyage, as we paced the 
deck of the Cephalonia, had begged me not to keep Oxford 
in my memory when I visited the American Cambridge. 
Oxford's ancient towers, her chapels and cloisters, her halls, 
her quadrangles and her lawns, High Street and Broad Street, 
Magdalen Bridge, and the massive ivy- mantled city walls, all 
made his heart sink within him when he thought of his own 
beloved Alma Mater. Dear as she was to him, how could she 
be dear to one in whose mind there always lived the image of 
the most beautiful and the most venerable of all universities ? 
" ' Oxford,' Southey once playfully said, ' is a place to make 
an American unhappy.' " Some touch of this unhappiness 
seemed to have fallen upon my companion as he then spoke to 
me. There was no need for it. If Oxford has ever made a 
single American unhappy, Harvard on many a summer day has 
made at all events one Englishman happy. 

In a fog on the Banks of Newfoundland I had caught a 

B I 



2 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

heavy cold, and for nearly a fortnight after my arrival I kept 
to the house. When at length I ventured out, I found the 
"Yard" of Harvard as pleasant a place to stroll in as the 
garden of St. John's and the walks of Magdalen. One thing 
only was wanting — there was not a single bench to be found. 
There was shade, and there was beauty, and the hurrying to 
and fro of young and eager life ; but there was no place for a 
weary man to sit and rest himself, as he watched the flickering 
of the light and shadow upon the grass, and the student's 
strong and rapid step. In my journal ^ I, recorded : — 

" On a hot June day I strolled with great pleasure in the 
Yard. The lawns were beautifully green, and the tall, graceful 
trees cast everywhere a delightful shade. It was surprising 
how green was the grass and how fresh, overshadowed though 
it was by trees. There is no quadrangle in Oxford more de- 
lightful on a hot summer day. Harvard surely is a College 
that a man can love." The old red-brick halls which enclose 
two sides of the Yard recalled to my mind not so much Oxford 
as the Courts of the Temple. Much of the beauty of the scene 
was due to the freshness of the foliage, for the New England 
spring is late. I had spent the winter in Switzerland. When 
I left Clarens on May 2, the lilacs had already faded. Ten 
days later I found them in full bloom in the parks of Liver- 
pool. On the twenty-second, the day on which I landed, they 
were still in bud in Cambridge. In June, therefore, the trees 
were in their first freshness. In the winter, when they were 
stripped of their leaves, and when the lawns were hidden 
beneath the snow, the Yard would not bear a comparison with 
Oxford. I was fortunate in seeing it at its best ; when the 

1 In the few extracts which I give from my journal I have not strictly 
followed the text; sometimes I have thrown two entries into one. 



I. . HARVARD COLLEGE. 3 

red-brick halls, half- revealed through the green leaves, half- 
hidden, with a sky above them blue as the skies of Italy, have 
a beauty of their own. 

One pleasant sight I unfortunately missed. In the summer 
evenings it has long been the habit for the Glee Club to sing 
in the Yard, while the students lie about on the grass, or lean 
out of the windows of their rooms listening. I went there 
once or twice in the hope of hearing the songs, but I chose 
the wrong time or the wrong day. The Yard was silent. This 
pleasant custom, I fear, is not so well kept up as of old. The 
Crimson, the undergraduates' daily paper, laments its decay. 
So long ago as Emerson's young days, singing was cultivated in 
the College. He presented himself with some of the other 
freshmen to the singing-master, who, " when his turn came, said 
to him, ' Chord ! ' ' What? ' said Emerson. ' Chord ! Chord ! 
I tell you,' repeated the master. ' I don't know what you 
mean,' said Emerson. ' Why, sing ! Sing a note ! ' So I made 
some kind of a noise, and the singing-master said, ' That will 
do, sir. You need not come again.' " ^ 

The long vacation I spent in a pleasant village on Cape 
Cod. When I returned to Cambridge at the end of Septem- 
ber, it was almost with a feeling of anxiety that I went back 
to a spot where I had happily sauntered away so many an idle 
hour. I feared lest I should find that, under the fierce influ- 
ence of the summer heats, most of its charms had passed 
away. My mind was soon set at rest. "The Yard," I re- 
corded, "looked very pretty and pleasant in the sunshine 
of an autumn day. I wandered about it for more than half 
an hour with enjoyment, watching the bustle of the beginning 
of term, and the young life so full of activity and hope. 

1 O. W. Holmes's R. IF. Emerson, 1885, p. 361. 



4 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

How many Presidents of the United States — Presidents, at 
least, in their confident ambition — were passing by me ! " 

How vast was the change since those far-distant days when 
"the fair and comely edifice " of freshly-cut timber in which 
the infant University was lodged, on a narrow strip of land 
"bordering a pleasant river," was "thought by some to be too 
gorgeous for a wilderness, and yet too mean, in others' appre- 
hensions, for a college ! " ^ Oxford, not many years earlier, 
had seen rise amid the meadows outside her city walls, that 
graceful pile in which the Gothic college and the ancient 
Jacobean mansion are so happily blended. The fair monu- 
ment which Nicholas Wadham raised to himself is durable, 
for it is built in stone. No less durable is the monument 
which John Harvard helped to raise, built though it was with 
unseasoned wood. This home of learning was destined to 
prove an abiding city; for its foundations rested, not on the 
piety of any one man, but on the zeal and the affection of a 
high-minded community. A man of great nobility of charac- 
ter presided over the General Court of the Colony which 
passed the first vote of money "towards a school or college." 
It was Henry Vane — Milton's "Vane, young in years, but in 
sage counsels old." He links Harvard to Oxford, for it was 
in Magdalen, most beautiful of colleges, that he had studied. 
His statue might well stand beside the Puritan minister's, 
under the shadow of the noble hall which commemorates the 
brave men who, two hundred years later, fell in the defence 
of that liberty for which Harvard crossed the sea, and for 
which Vane gave his life. 

1 New England^ s First Fruits and Johnson's Wonder Working Provi- 
dence^ 1651, quoted in The Early College Buildings at Camh'idge, by A. M. 
Davis, 1892, p. 4. 




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I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 5 

However " fair and comely " was the outside of the building, 
inside there was poverty enough. In a country where the 
midwinter cold ofttimes is so sharp that it freezes the inlets 
of the sea, in few of the chambers and studies was there a 
fireplace. The modern American likes to keep up the tem- 
perature of his house to seventy degrees. In the lecture- 
rooms at Harvard, the thermometer is not allowed to fall 
below sixty-eight. It often stands above this oppressive heat. 
The forefathers of these delicate New Englanders lived in a 
building made of ill-seasoned wood, which would soon have 
shrunk and let the north wind sweep through the crevices. 
"The students must have collected in the hall within the 
settle, where, by the light of the public candle, cowering over 
the public fire, was to be found the only place where they 
could, with any sort of comfort, pursue their studies during 
the long winter evenings."^ A set of rules, under the name 
of Liberties and Orders of Harvard College, had been drawn 
up for their government. No scholar was to be admitted till 
"he was able to read Tully, or &uch like classical author 
extempore, and make and speak true Latin in verse and prose, 
suo {tit aiunt) Marte, and decline perfectly the paradigms 
of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue." ^ Such a knowledge 
of Latin seems, at first sight, little likely to have been met 
with in so young a settlement; but outside Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, there was perhaps, at this time, no spot where among 
an equal number of inhabitants, so many Englishmen were to 
be found who had received a liberal education. So early as 
1638 there were forty or fifty graduates of the old country 

1 The Early Buildings at Cambridge, p. 23; The College in Early 
Days, p. 8. 

2 Quincy's Harvard, I. 515. 



6 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

dwelling in the sparse villages of New England.^ These men 
were not those failures of a university who, in the present 
age, year after year cross the sea to our Colonies to become 
failures once more. They were a chosen band, broken to toil 
and hardships, and yet retaining a deep love of learning. 
Their children should not grow up in ignorance. "'Learn- 
ing,' to use their own fine expression, was not 'to be buried 
in the graves of the fathers.' " ^ In almost every parish there 
was a minister "who usually prepared the young men for their 
examinations. Latin was taught ^s a spoken language. 
Often teacher and pupil would take walks together through 
the fields and woods, and converse of all they saw in Latin." ^ 
The rules by which the infant College was governed are too 
long to quote at length. The following will serve as in- 
stances : — 

** Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies to know 
God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life. 

"They shall honour as their parents magistrates, elders, tutors, and 
aged persons by being silent in their presence (except they be called on 
to answer), not gainsaying; showing all those laudable expressions of hon- 
our and reverence in their presence that are in use, as bowing before them, 
standing uncovered, or the like. 

"None shall pragmatically intrude or intermeddle in other men's affairs. 

"None shall, under any pretence whatsoever, frequent the company 
and society of such men as lead an ungirt and dissolute life. 

" The scholars shall never use their mother tongue, except that in public 
exercises of oratory, or such like, they be called to make them in English. 

" Every scholar shall be called by his surname only till he be invested 
with his first degree, except he be a Fellow- Commoner or Knight's eldest 
son, or of superior nobility."* 

1 Life of Joseph Story., II. 256. 

2 Harvard College, sjoth Anniversary ^ p. 253. 

* History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, by G, G. Bush, p. 24. 

* Quincy's Harvard, I. 515. 



I. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 7 

By this last rule it is not meant that the Christian name 
shall not be used, but that no title of respect, such as Sir or 
Master, shall be given. Johnson, in a note on Sir Oliver 
Mar-text in As You Like It, says : " He that has taken his first 
degree at the University is in the Acadej?iical style called 
Dominus, and in common language was heretofore termed 
Sir^ ^ In the Harvard accounts, quoted in Mr. A. M. Davis's 
Ea7'ly College Buildings,'^ we find entered Sir Bulkeley, Sir 
Brewster, and Sir Downing. Sir Downing was George Down- 
ing, the "stingy fellow" and "perfidious rogue" of Pepys's 
Diary. ^ 

The lot of the two first presidents, Dunster and Chauncy, 
was as hard as the lot of learned men has so often been in 
all times and in all countries. The ills which assailed the 
scholar's life assailed them. They were scarcely happier 
than Lydiat or Galileo. Both were men of great learning. 
Chauncy had been nominated, by the heads of Houses at the 
English Cambridge, to the chair of Hebrew, and had filled 
the chair of Greek."* They did their duty faithfully, and had 
as their reward, " thankless labour, unrequited service, arrear- 
ages unpaid, posthumous applause, a doggerel dirge, and a 
Latin epitaph."^ It was the ?es diwa et I'egni novitas — the 
hard times and all the difficulties of a young settlement — 
which were mostly to blame. The first president had added 
to his troubles by " falling into the briers of Antipaedobap- 
tism. He had borne public testimony in the church at 

1 Johnson's Shakespeare, ed. 1765, II. 66. 2 p_ g. 

3 Ed. 1848, I. 108, 333. 

4 Perhaps, however, he was only Greek Lecturer at Trinity College, 
See the Dictiona?y of Natio7ial Biography 

^ Quincy's Harvard, I. 14. 



8 HARVARJp COLLEGE. chap. 

Cambridge against the administration of baptism to any 
infant whatsoever," Privations he was more able to put up 
with than heresy. In a petition to the Governor he said: 
"Considering the poverty of the country, I am willing to 
descend to the lowest step; desiring nothing more than to 
supply me and mine with food and raiment."^ The second 
president also had his own briers of baptism into which he 
fell. Contrary to the prevailing faith among the settlers that 
"a sprinkling was sufficient," he maintained, says an early 
writer, "that the infant should be washed all over, — an opin- 
ion not tolerable in this cold region, and impracticable at 
certain seasons of the year."^ He had as hard a lot as his 
predecessor. 

Nineteen years after the College had been founded, it pos- 
sessed, as was stated in a memorial, " in real revenue about 
twelve pounds per annum (which is a small pittance to be 
shared among four Fellows), besides fifteen pounds per annum 
which, by the donors' appointment, is for scholarships."^ 
Nevertheless, the sum of money voted by the General Court 
for the foundation of the College, "was equal to a year's rate 
of the whole Colony." ^ From the first, gifts and benefits had 
not been wanting, but it was "willing poverty" rather than 
wealth which gave. Of wealthy men there were few, if any, 
to be found. John Harvard, that "godly man," that "lover 
of learning," a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 
and "sometime minister of God's word at Charlestown," 
bequeathed to the College half his property and his library. 
The sum received was not quite four hundred pounds. His 
books give us some insight into the character of a man of 

1 Quincy's Harvard, I. i8, 20. ^ 73. j, ^y^ 

3 //;. I. 23. 4 lb. I. 8. 



1. . ' HARVARD COLLEGE. 9 

whom, unhappily, scarcely- anything is known. He had 
brought with him across the sea more than two hundred and 
sixty volumes, among them not only Chrysostom and Calvin, 
Duns Scotus, and Luther, but Homer and Plutarch, Terence 
and Horace, with Stephanus's notes. Chapman's Hoi?ier, 
^z.Q.orC's, Essays 2cs\di Advancejnent of Learning, dC(\A Camden's 
Remains. The magistrates raised among themselves two 
hundred pounds to be spent on books. Other gifts came in. 
The Rev. W. Allen sent two cows. Cotton cloth worth nine 
shillings was given by Richard Dana, the ancestor of another 
Richard Dana, who, nearly two hundred years later, when a 
student of Harvard, failing in health, went for two years 
before the mast, and on his return gave the world a delightful 
book. The Rev. Mr. Latham, of Lancaster County,^ England, 
sent five pounds. Richard Saltonstall, a man of large means, 
gave more than five hundred pounds. He belonged to one of 
those New England families, happily not few in number, who, 
generation after generation, have shown their love for Harvard. 
Theophilus Gale, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, "a 
learned and industrious divine, as appears by his Court of the 
Gentiles and his Vanity of Pagan Philosophy,^' bequeathed his 
library to the College. From Sir John Maynard, who outlived 
all his brother-lawyers, and but for the coming of William of 
Orange would have outlived the law also, came eight chests 
of books. From the New England towns and villages, and even 
from distant settlements, contributions flowed in. Little Scar- 
borough, away to the north in Maine, sent two pounds nine 
shillings and sixpence, while from the far-distant South, the 

1 I have seen on a tombstone in the graveyard of Barnstable, Massa- 
chusetts, a man described as being born " in the County of Lancashire, 
England." The meaning of the word shire is apparently lost in America. 



10 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

people of Eleutheria in the Bahamas, "out of their poverty," 
sent one hundred and twenty-four pounds. Smaller gifts came 
in, such as a pewter flagon worth ten shillings, a bell, a fruit- 
dish, a sugar-spoon, a silver-tipt jug, one great salt, and one 
small trencher-salt.-^ In the Infoi'ination of the Present Neces- 
sities of the College which was laid before the General Court 
in 1655, mention is made of "some parcels of land," owned 
by the College, "none of which can with any reason or to any 
benefit be sold." A happy thing it was that these "parcels" 
were retained, for some of them have risen enormously in 
value. The house and plot of ground in Boston which one 
Henry Webb bequeathed to the College in 1660, ten years 
ago, was set down in the accounts as worth one hundred and 
sixty-five thousand dollars [^33,730].- Let "the gentle 
reader " who buys his book at Messrs. Little, Brown & 
Co. 's shop give a thought to the old Puritan, who two and a 
half centuries ago lived on this very spot, and dying left "the 
rent to be forever for the maintenance of some poor scholars, 
or otherwise for the best good of the College." 

With all these gifts, the College long remained poor. How 
small were its means, even so late as 1695, is sho\vn by a vote 
of the Corporation " that six leather chairs be forthwith pro- 
vided for the use of the library, and six more before the com- 
mencement, in case the treasury will allow of it."^ Forks 
appear for the first time in the accounts, in 1707. So late 
as the middle of last century, " each scholar carried to the 
dining-table his own knife and fork, and when he had dined, 

1 Quincy's Flarva^-d, I. 10, 12, 166, 506-513. 

- lb. I. 23; Anmial Reports, 1 883-4, Appendix, p. 19; The Exhibitions 
at Ilarviwd College, by A. M. Davis, p. 5. 
^ Higher Education, etc., p. 49. 



I. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 11 

wiped them on the tablecloth."^ A short time before Adam 
Smith became an exhibitioner of Balliol College, the knives 
and forks were chained to the table. ^ In the inns in France, 
even many years later than this, a knife was not supplied, 
only a fork. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, in 1742, noticed, as a 
sign of increasing refinement in Scotland, that at the tavern 
in Haddington, where the Presbytery dined, knives and forks 
were provided.^ There was so little money in the Colony 
that the Harvard students often settled their accounts in kind. 
"Bills were paid with rye, Indian [corn], wheat, malt, apples, 
butter; with cows, oxen, sheep, lambs, steers; with beef, pork, 
and bacon; with sugar and salt; with wool and sacking. Pay- 
ments in meat would appear, at one time, to have become dis- 
proportionately large"; for in 1667 the overseers "ordered 
that the Steward shall not be injoyned to accept of above 
one quarter part flesh-meat of any person."* 

Better days were drawing near. Harvard had warm friends 
on both sides of the Atlantic, and on both sides wealth was 
rapidly increasing. From the old home gifts and bequests 
came to the College, which, likely enough, would have gone 
to Oxford or Cambridge had either university been opened to 
the Nonconformists. The miserable test of the Thirty-nine 
Articles deprived our ancient seats of learning of good men 
and good money. " Among the English Dissenters, Harvard 
College had at all times been the object of munificent patro- 
nage." "The constant stream of gifts which flowed from Eng- 
land " did not cease even with the War of the Revolution.^ 

1 Early College Buildings, pp. 13, 20. 

2 Scotland and Scols/nen in the Eighteenth Ceninry, IT. 307. 

^ A. Carlyle 's Autobiography, p. 64. * Early College Buildings, p. 12. 

^ Quincy's LJarvard, II. 115; Higher Education, etc., p. 52. 



12 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

In the names given to Holden Chapel and Holworthy and 
Hollis Halls, are commemorated English benefactors who 
never set foot on American soil. Sir Matthew Holworthy, 
a London merchant, bequeathed to the College the largest 
sum which it received in the seventeenth century. Of men 
bearing the name of Hollis, there was "a constellation of 
benefactors," to use the words of President Quincy. So long 
ago as 1690, Robert Thorner, the uncle of the first of the seven 
who form this constellation, left property to the College. The 
last, who died in 1804, bequeathed one hundred pounds to 
be laid out in Greek and Latin classics. Four of these men 
bore the Christian name of Thomas. The first Thomas 
founded Professorships of Divinity and of Mathematics and 
Natural Philosophy. "Scarcely a ship sailed from London 
during the last ten years of his life without bearing some 
evidence of his affection and liberality." On sending the 
first of his numerous presents of books to the Library, he wrote : 
"After forty years' diligent application to mercantile busi- 
ness, my God, whom I serve, has mercifully succeeded my 
endeavours, and with my increase inclined my heart to a 
proportional distribution. I have credited the promise, 'He 
that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, ' and have found 
it verified in this life." His grandson's donations, though 
not nearly so large, scarcely fell short of two thousand pounds 
sterling.^ He is Thomas Hollis, "the strenuous Whig," de- 
scribed by Boswell, " who used to send over Europe presents 
of democratical books, with their boards stamped with daggers 
and caps of liberty." Many of these volumes came to Har- 
vard " splendidly bound, and the covers stamped with a char- 
acteristic emblem or device. Some are marked by a liberty 

1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 183, 186, 232, 430; II. 147, 411. 




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I. * HARVARD COLLEGE. 13 

cap, or an owl holding in its talons a pen, with the motto, 
'By deeds of peace '; others by the effigy of Liberty, holding 
in her right hand her cap, and in her left a spear." The 
learned Mrs. Carter said " he was a bad man. He used to 
talk uncharitably." To which Johnson replied : "Poh! poh ! 
madam; who is the worse for being talked of uncharitably? 
Besides, he was a dull, poor creature as ever lived; and I 
believe he would not have done harm to a man whom he knew 
to be of very opposite principles to his own. I remember 
once at the Society of Arts, when an advertisement was to be 
drawn up, he pointed me out as the man who could do it best. 
This, you will observe, was kindness to me. I, however, 
slipt away, and escaped it." When Mrs. Carter went on to 
say: " I doubt he was an Atheist," Johnson rejoined, " I don't 
know that. He might, perhaps, have become one if he had 
had time to ripen (smiling). He might have exuberated 
into an Atheist." ^ Horace Walpole described him as a "most 
excellent man, a most immaculate Whig, but as simple a poor 
soul as ever existed, except his editor." " Dr. Franklin wrote 
much more highly of him. Speaking of what he had done, 
he writes : " It is prodigious the quantity of good that may 
be done by one man, if he will make a business of it.'''' ^ 

Though, at its foundation. Harvard received a grant of 
public money, nevertheless, to the Commonwealth, during the 
two centuries and a half of its existence, it has owed but little. 
It has slowly been raised up to its great height, first by the 
generous zeal for learning in outsiders, and next by the love 
and liberality of its own children. By the State it was far 

1 Boswell, Life of Johnson, Clarendon Press edition, IV. 97. 

2 Walpole's L^etters, VII. 346. 

3 Franklin's Memoirs, ed. 1 81 8, III. 135. 



14 - HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

more encumbered by the unsoundness which afflicted the cur- 
rency during the whole of the eighteenth century, than relieved 
by the aids which were conferred. Twenty years before the 
vast disturbance to public credit that was caused by the Revo- 
lutionary War, so early as 1755, the treasurer of the Col- 
lege, on valuing its property, " put down all the capital sums 
at only one-fifth part of the nominal sums originally given, 
in consequence of the funds having sunk by the depreciation 
of the paper currency." ^ By the end of the war the deprecia- 
tion had become far greater. Fifteen thousand six hundred 
pounds, not in nominal but in real value, which before the 
outbreak of hostilities had been invested in the public funds, 
if sold out eleven years later, would have produced no more 
than seven hundred and fifty-eight pounds.^ Silver and gold 
had disappeared from common use; "in paper money, a quill 
cost a dollar and a half, and a dinner over fifty dollars." ^ In 
1780 the Professor of Divinity was paid in paper money, the 
magnificent sum of nine thousand one hundred and ninety-two 
pounds, for one year's salary. Let not our Regius Professor 
of Divinity at Oxford mournfully reflect that in a petty col- 
lege in a small colony, in the comparative poverty of last 
century, a rebel's heterodoxy received as its reward nearly 
five times as much as his own orthodoxy at the present day in 
the wealthiest university in the world. In gold, silver, and 
copper, the poor man would have been paid only eighty-seven 
pounds ten shillings and eight-pence;^ more than enough, 
no doubt, for a Dissenter and a rebel, but scarcely enough for 
the needs, however modest, of human life. Part of the heavy 

^ Quincy's Harvard^ II. 237. ^ lb. II. 250, 

^ Higher Education, by G. G. Bush, p. 67. 
* Quincy's Harvard, II. 538. 



I. . HARVARD COLLEGE. 15 

loss which fell on Harvard was made up by severe economy, 
and by the management of an honest and able treasurer. 
Through the worst times the Corporation, mainly trusting 
to his advice, "held with unshaken firmness the certificates 
of public debt which they had been compelled to receive, 
and vested in them with great judgment whatever sums were 
brought into their treasury. On the funding of the National 
Debt, the College derived the full benefit of their wisdom 
and of their confidence in the ultimate returning of the 
nation to a sense of justice." ^ 

The Legislature of Massachusetts twice wronged the com- 
munity at large by granting a lottery to Harvard. With the 
aid of the money thus mischievously raised two new halls were 
built. 2 Fox ten years, beginning with 1814, the College re- 
ceived an annual contribution from the State of ten thousand 
dollars (^2044), a large part of which, by the terms of the 
vote, was spent in defraying the fees of poor students.^ Since 
1824, no public aid of any kind has been granted. Happily, 
the stream of private bounty soon began to flow more liberally 
than ever. Even before 1780, about three times as much had 
come to the College by gifts and bequests as had been contri- 
buted by the State.'* The whole of the State's contributions 
has been frequently exceeded many fold by the gift of a 
single citizen in a single year. "European universities," 
writes Professor Goodwin, " boast of the imperial and national 
governments which support them, and support them with noble 
liberality; but the bounty of emperors and princes, and even 
of republics, is precarious, and may fail with political changes. 
Harvard has a more than imperial treasury in the love and 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 254. ^ /^. n. 273, 292. 

3 /^, XI. 331, 356. ^ Higher Education^ etc., p. 66. 



16 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

respect of her sons, and in the confidence of the community." ^ 
Rarely has the stream of wise beneficence flowed with a wider 
and more even flood. In 1840, the "productive estate, real 
and personal," of the College was valued at six hundred and 
forty-six thousand dollars (^{,'132, 104), "the result of private 
munificence, or of the wise management of the Corporation." "- 
In 1 89 1 -9 2 the income from the estate amounted to four hun- 
dred and forty- three thousand dollars (^£90,591), more than 
two-thirds of the value that the estate itself had borne half a 
century earlier; while the gifts and bequests in that year were 
no less than five hundred and sixteen thousand dollars 
(;,£ 105,519). In the three years ending in 18S4, the Uni- 
versity received in bequests and gifts, one million and ninety- 
six thousand dollars (;£"224,i28). Seven years later we are 
told that " the gifts to the University continue in an ever- 
flowing stream, and amount to about five hundred thousand 
dollars [;£'io2,249] annually." In 1891-92 the gifts to the 
University exceeded by sixty thousand dollars (yj"i2,269) the 
payments of its three thousand students.^ "The financial 
year, 1 89 2-93," reports the President to the Board of Over- 
seers, "was satisfactory as regards the increase of the funds, 
and balances by gifts and bequests, the total increase of the 
year being five hundred and fifty-two thousand dollars 
[/^i 12,881]."^ Benefactors of Harvard, it seems, are not 
likely to suffer from "a satiety of commendation." I know 
of nothing equal to this "satisfactory," since the days of 

^ The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 41. 

- Quincy's Harvard, II. 402, 

8 Harvard Ufiiversity, by F. Bolles, pp. 98, lOO; Annual Reports, 
1883-S4, p. 45; Higher Education in Massachusetts, by G. G. Bush, 
p. 224. 

* Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 47. 



I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 17 

Harry Hotspur and his wife. "'Oil, my sweet Harry,' says 
siie, 'iiow many hiast thiou Icilled to-day?' 'Give my roan 
liorse a drencii, ' says lie; and answers, 'some fourteen,' an 
iiour after; 'a trifle, a trifle.' " Tlie extraordinary moderation 
of the President's words only shows how splendid for many a 
year must have been the benefactions. Among the contribu- 
tions none is more touching than the bequest of an aged 
negress, a widow. In the evil days of old, she and her hus- 
band had escaped from slavery. He became the coloured 
messenger of John Albion Andrew, that great Governor of 
Massachusetts, who once said : " I know not what record of 
sin awaits me in the other world, but this I know, — that I 
was never mean enough to despise any man because he was 
poor, because he was ignorant, or because he was black." 
With the bequest, which is valued at more than four thousand 
dollars (^817), a scholarship is to be founded for the benefit 
of poor and deserving coloured students.^ That they need 
not fear humiliating treatment from their comrades was 
strikingly shown by an incident which occurred during my 
visit to Cambridge. A negro undergraduate, going to have 
his hair cut, found that the hairdresser drew the line at a 
white man just as in Nicliolas Nickleby it had been drawn at 
a baker. It so happened that the student was a great foot- 
ball player. His brother-athletes took up his cause, and let 
the hairdresser know that if he persisted in his intolerance, 
he would lose the custom of the College. The man quickly 
yielded. The Legislature of Massachusetts at once passed a 
statute by which throughout the Commonwealth barbers were 
henceforth required to be no respecters of persons, and to 
shave without distinction of colour. 

1 Harvard Graduates' ALagazine, March, 1S94, p. 442. 
C 



18 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

In England rich men found families; in America they 
found universities, or they enlarge them. The family often 
falls away to shame; the university remains forever a noble 
and unsullied memorial. On its founder no stain is ever cast 
by the misconduct of his descendants. It is only the noble- 
man's title which, raising each succeeding generation above 
the world, and making it conspicuous for disgrace, can cast 
reproach backwards upon the fair fame of him who first held 
it. How many great lawyers, how many great soldiers and 
sailors, how many great traders and bankers, by the rank which 
was given them as an honour, have become shamed through 
the folly and misconduct of those who inherited it! Had it 
not been for the title, the very existence of these unworthy 
descendants would be unknown; the chain which bound them 
to their illustrious forefather would be unseen. Not every 
foolish peer is "the tenth transmitter of some foolish face." 
It is surprising how soon folly can appear among the descend- 
ants of men of the most vigorous and the most subtle minds. 
Happy it is for America that, free as her citizens are by the 
very institutions of the country, from the almost overpowering 
temptation to found a family, they are diverted into a widely 
different path in the natural search after distinction ! There 
are, indeed, among them, men so base that they turn their 
back on their country where their wealth has been made and 
is still accumulating, and, doing nothing for its good, lead a 
luxurious life in Europe amidst all the refinements of an 
ancient civilization. Others, unworthy of republican equality, 
become hangers-on of the English aristocracy. "The wealth 
of the New World," writes Dr. Wendell Holmes, "burrows 
its way among the privileged classes of the Old World." ^ 

1 R. W. Emerson, by O. W. Holmes, 1885, p. 180. 



I. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 19 



"The gallantry and military spirit of the old English nobility " 
is no longer content with "going into the city to look for a 
fortune." It goes all the way to New York; unless, as some- 
times happens, the fortune crosses the sea to look for it. 
There are other Americans who, like the wretch Jay Gould, 
heap up riches for riches' sake; who living give nothing and 
dying leave nothing to any great and noble object. They 
pass away without showing that for one single moment they 
had been touched by a generous thought. "They die, and 
make no sign." 

It is, for the most part, by men who have been educated 
at Harvard, or by those who wish to commemorate them, that 
the gifts and bequests are made. Early last year, for instance, 
a widow " executed an agreement with the President and Fel- 
lows to build a Dormitory for the College at a cost of about 
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars (^30,673), to be 
called Perkins Hall." It is raised as a memorial to three 
graduates of her husband's family, the eldest of whom matri- 
culated in 1 7 17 and the youngest in 1819.^ In 1764, under 
the will of Thomas Hancock, the Hancock Professorship of 
Hebrew and other Oriental languages had been founded. 
The endowment was but small. One hundred and twenty- 
eight years later, a remote descendant of the founder aug- 
mented it "by a residuary legacy which has thus far yielded 
seventy-two thousand dollars (^t4,72 2).^ About the same 
time the College received fifty thousand dollars ( 7^10,224) 
under the will of George Bemis, towards the foundation of a 
Chair of International Law.^ In the same year, from the 
estate of another graduate, George Draper, there came a 

1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 45. ^ lb. p. 30. 

3 Reports, 1891-92, p. 26. 



20 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

bequest of forty-seven thousand dollars (^9610).^ These 
are but instances of the never-failing stream of benefactions 
by which the love of Harvard men is shown for Harvard. It 
may be the case, and no doubt sometimes is the case, that it 
is mainly by the desire of distinction that the gift is prompted. 
Happy is the country where it is by the University and not by 
the Crown that the wealthy trader is honoured, and where the 
title which is coveted and won is not that of Knight or Baro- 
net, but of Founder ! 

So constant and so bountiful are the contributions which 
Harvard receives, that on them she counts for most of the 
enlargements which are needed by the rapidly increasing 
number of her students, and by the fresh requirements of 
science and learning. The fees, therefore, that are paid 
for tuition are laid out in providing not accommodation, but 
instruction. New subjects are included in each year's course, 
and additional professorships are established. In the brief 
space of a young man's life. Harvard "has been removed out 
of the strait into a broad place where there is no straitness." 

We of the ancient universities may well look with wonder, 
and even with a certain touch of sadness, on these great 
doings. Why does not the same stream of bounty flow on 
Oxford and Cambridge? Why, when they make known their 
needs, — and their needs often are great, — does not a gene- 
rous benefactor at once arise. Balliol College, as a memorial 
to its famous Master, is attempting, this very year, by public 
subscription, to enlarge its foundation so that it may do even 
greater things than it has already done. The sum which it 
has received is not one-tenth part of what this American Uni- 
versity receives almost every year; and yet less than half a 
century ago the students at Harvard were not twice as nume- 

^ Harvard Graduates' Jl/acazine, January, 1893, P- 252. 



I. HARVARD COLLEGE. 21 

rous as those of Balliol at the present time. In Cambridge, 
by the great fall in rents, the salary of the Downing Professor 
of Medicine has dwindled to two hundred pounds a year. 
The post lately became vacant by the resignation of the Pro- 
fessor. "It will be somewhat difficult," wrote the Ttjjies,^ 
" to obtain a suitable successor owing to the fact that the pro- 
fessorship is most insufficiently endowed." All the fame 
that Cambridge has gained by her great School of Medicine 
apparently does nothing for her. In the American Cam- 
bridge, such an insufficiency in so important a professorship 
could scarcely exist; it certainly would not last long. Ox- 
ford "^ is wronged by the men who, even after all the reforms 
which have been made, are overpaid for the work they do. 
Much of the work done in the University is but ill-requited. 
Many a College tutor measures out his labour not by what he 
receives, but by a noble zeal for learning and for the welfare 
of his pupils. Some of them, I think, would do more good 
if they laboured less. The mischief from over-teaching is 
not much less than the mischief from under-teaching. The 
over-taught student, when his guide is from his side, gropes 
helplessly along the road of learning. Be that as it may, the 
work that is done in the University is generous in its total 
amount when measured by its reward. Those who are over- 
paid are few in number compared with the whole body, but 
they are conspicuous by their position. To them must be 
added the holders of prize fellowships, — men who for the 
most part do nothing, and are expected to do nothing, either 
for learning or even for teaching. In many departments 
there is need of greater and of new endowments. These 
will flow in but slowly, if they flow in at all, so long as it is 

1 January 31, 1894. 

2 I say nothing of Cambridge, of which I know but little. 



22 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. i. 

known in the country that large sums are still wasted, as wasted 
they most certainly are. No one can reproach Harvard with 
an ill use of her funds; no one, I believe, can point to 
a single man who does not at least do a fair day's work for a 
fair day's pay. "The College salaries," reported the Presi- 
dent, ten years ago, "have remained stationary for fifteen 
years, and all that while the College has been demanding of 
its teachers more and more learning, labour, enthusiasm, and 
personal influence."^ Harvard has no prize appointments to 
give away. She is above all favouritism. She lends no ear 
to the claims of religious orthodoxy or of party politics. She 
seeks the ablest teacher she can find, and she pays him not 
extravagantly, but not illiberally. Whenever a need for help 
arises, she appeals with confidence to her children, because 
she can show that she makes a wise use of all that is intrusted 
to her. Great as are her endowments, greater still are her 
needs, for she is ever advancing, ever taking in fresh branches 
of knowledge, ever drawing to herself fresh students. In the 
annual report made by the President to the Board of Over- 
seers, the whole state of the University — its work, its receipts, 
its expenses, its hopes, its fears, its requirements — is all 
clearly set forth before the whole community. As they read 
it and think of the lowly past, "they look backward with 
exultation and thanksgiving and forward with confidence and 
high resolve."^ It is this exultation and thanksgiving, this 
confidence and high resolve, which form one of the chief 
sources whence spring the great benefactions which are pour- 
ing in upon the old College from her proud and grateful 
children. 

1 Annual Reports^ 1883-84, p. 45, 

2 Fr(jni the address of President Eliot at the Commemoration in i886. 
Harvard University, 2^oth Anniversary, p. 263. 



CHAPTER 11. 

The Foundation of Harvard. — Cambridge in England and Cambridge 
in New England. — "Fair Harvard," — Emmanuel College. — The 
Washington Elm. — General Washington a Doctor of Laws. — The 
University at Concord. — An Overbearing Treasurer. — Harvard and 
Slavery. 

THE pleasantness of Harvard I have already described. 
It is a spot that a student can love. It is indeed 
"Fair Harvard." Happily it has, moreover, that other great 
quality without which a university seems maimed and imper- 
fect, — a quality which no munificence can confer. It is 
venerable. Measured by the age of the earliest foundations 
of Oxford and Cambridge, it is almost in its youth. Never- 
theless, when it was founded, Milton was still " inglorious," and 
Cromwell a quiet country gentleman. Two years before our 
Queen was crowned at Westminster it kept its two hundredth 
anniversary. In the speeches made on that great day it 
proudly carried back its past to that far-distant time when its 
parent, the great English university, was founded on the banks 
of the Cam. It was by a small knot of Cambridge men, men 
who may have known " young Lycidas," that the foundations of 
the American Cambridge were laid in the midst of dangers and 
hardships. John Harvard was a Master of Arts of Emmanuel 
College. Story, who at the time of the celebration of the two 
hundredth anniversary of the College in 1836, by his lectures on 
law, was making Harvard known to the Old World, gave as 

23 



24 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

his toast at the banquet : " Our Ancient Mother, the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge in Old England — Salve magna parens, 
— Magna virumT "The very spot," he said, "where we 
are assembled is consecrated by a thousand endearing associa- 
tions of the past. The very name of Cambridge compels us 
to cast our eyes across the Atlantic, and brings up a glowing 
gratitude for our unspeakable obligations to the parent uni- 
versity whose name we proudly bear, and have borne for two 
centuries." ^ 

These Harvard men were not content with doing honour to 
the English Cambridge. They were more than members of a 
university ; they were citizens of a great Confederation of 
States, They were New Englanders — New Englanders not 
forgetful of the Old England from which they were sprung. 
" Gratitude to the noble country of our fathers " was next 
given as a toast by Dr. John Warren, the nephew of General 
Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill. " Let us imagine ourselves," 
he said, " to have sprung from any other nation of Europe, 
and how different, probably, would have been our condition. 
To England we owe the vigorous freedom of thought which, 
there taking its origin, was transplanted by our ancestors to a 
virgin soil, and has grown with a luxuriance beyond example. 
A common parentage, a common language, a community of 
feeling, have given us all the privileges of English sentiment, 
learning, and ingenuity. ... In our parent, England, we 
have the happiness to see the great supporter and defender of 
liberal institutions throughout the world. ... I do not 
hesitate to say that there is a greatness in the conduct of 
England during the convulsions of Europe [the Napoleonic 
wars] which has no parallel in the story of admired Greece or 

^ Quincy's LLarvard, II, 675. 



11. HARVARD COLLEGE. 25 

Rome. The efforts of these nations were inspirited by a love 
of conquest, a love of power, a desire of revenge. England 
was influenced by a higher principle — a determined and 
unconquerable opposition to despotism." ^ 

This speech was made but one and twenty years after the 
close of a war which had been provoked by our overbearing 
violence on the seas, and which was disgraced by an act of bar- 
barity worthy of a horde of Cossacks. The rising town of 
Washington, the capital of the United States, had been burnt to 
the ground by Englishmen. " Few more shameful acts are 
recorded in our history ; and it was the more shameful in 
that it was done under strict orders from the government 
at home."^ Story's memory went back to the War of Inde- 
pendence. In the small seaport town in which his childhood 
was passed, peace, when at last it came, found nine hundred 
widows whose husbands had fallen fighting on sea or land, all 
victims to the mad folly of our government.^ Had some 
Enghshman been present at this celebration, when he heard 
such speeches as these, he might well have started from his 
seat and exclaimed : — 

"Some write their wrongs in marble; you, more just, 
Stoop down serene and write them in the dust." 

Not all the speakers were a Story and a Warren. The 
American Eagle was to flap her wings and make her screams 
heard, even in an ancient seat of learning. Edward Everett 
was there, the president of the day, the perfection and model 
of all that is bad in the oratory of the United States. The 
following passage shows what was esteemed eloquence in 

^ Quincy's Hayvard, IT. 679. 

2 J. R. Gre-n's SJwrt History of the English People, p. 808. 

^ Life of Joseph Story, I. 31. 



26 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

a country where Daniel Webster, still in the fulness of his 
power, was showing how sublime is the force of simplicity. 
" Yes, in the very dawn of independence, while the lions of 
land yet lay slumbering in the long shadows of the throne, 
an eaglet, bred in the delicate air of freedom which fanned 
the academic groves, had, from his ' coign of vantage ' on 
yonder tower, drunk the first rosy sparkle of the sun of liberty 
into his calm, undazzled eye, and whetted his talons for the 
conflict." ^ It was not in this mould that Lincoln formed that 
rugged eloquence which was heard at Gettysburg over the 
graves of the soldiers who fell in the great war. Whoever was 
his master in speech, most certainly it was not a rhetorician. 

It was for the Centennial Celebration of 1836 that Fair 
Harvard was written — that song which, as the year comes 
round, is sung at every commencement by the great gathering 
of Harvard men. It begins, — 

" Fair Harvard ! thy sons to thy Jubilee throng." 
and ends, — 

" Be the herald of Light and the bearer of Love, 
Till the stock of the Puritans die." 

The best verse is the following : — 

"To thy bowers we were led in the bloom of our youth, 

From the home of our free-roving years, 
"When our fathers had warned, and our mothers had prayed, 

And our sisters had blest through their tears. 
Thou then wert our parent, — the nurse of our souls, — 

We were moulded to manhood by thee. 
Till, freighted with treasure-thoughts, friendships, and hopes. 

Thou didst launch us on Destiny's sea." 

The speeches on this great day must have been brief — brief 
for the speakers of the Old World, preternaturally brief for the 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 658. 







O 

DJ 

J 
O 
O 

Q 

a: 
< 
> 

< 

X 



o 



o 



w 



II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 27 

orators of the New. It was not till the thirty- second toast that 
the ladies were reached. There were forty toasts in all. "The 
hour of eight o'clock having now arrived, Josiah Quincy, Junior, 
moved, ' That this Assembly of the Alumni be adjourned to 
meet at this place on the 8th of September, 1936.' " ^ In spite 
of the forty toasts it was not, so far as I can make out, eight 
o'clock in the morning when the Assembly broke up, but only 
eight o'clock in the evening. The moderation of each speaker 
which allowed forty toasts to be gone through in five or six 
hours at most is in striking contrast with the speech delivered 
at Oxford not twenty years later by the Vice-Chancellor. 
There, too, it was a great day ; for the orator and scholar, 
the Earl of Derby, was welcomed as the new Chancellor of the 
University, the successor of the great Duke. Some of the best 
speakers of England were guests at the banquet, and a fine flow 
of varied eloquence was looked for. There was a flow, but 
most of it came from one source. The Vice-Chancellor, a man 
insignificant except for his piety, spoke for two hours and more 
at a stretch. By the time he sat down the audience was ex- 
hausted, the orators were dejected, and the reporters, so I am 
told, were drunk. 

At Harvard the length of the adjournment was halved by 
the next generation, who met in November, 1886. Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, who in 1836, at the dinner, had sung a 
song which he had written for the great day, half a century 
later was the chosen poet of this second commemoration. 
Lowell, as an undergraduate, had witnessed the earlier gather- 
ing : he was now the Orator. Our English Cambridge was 
represented by the Master of St. John's, and Emmanuel College 
— John Harvard's College — by Dr. Creighton, Senior Fellow 

1 Quincy 's Harvard, II. 706. 



28 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

and Professor of Ecclesiastical History.^ Lowell ended his 
oration by welcoming the guests, above all, the guests from 
the foreign seats of learning. In the name of the Alumni 
" I give," he said, " a special greeting to the gentleman who 
brings the message of John Harvard's College, Emmanuel. 
The welcome we give him could not be warmer than that 
which we offer to his colleagues ; but we cannot help feeling 
that in pressing his hand our own instinctively draws a little 
more tightly, as with a sense of nearer kindred." This 
passage, we are told, was more loudly applauded than almost 
any other part of his speech.- That' "blood is thicker than 
water " was felt not only by the American commodore, when he 
opened fire on the Chinese forts in support of our hard-pressed 
gun-boats, but by these New Englanders who had gathered 
together to celebrate the foundation of their University by their 
English forefathers. 

Two years earlier than this Commemoration when Emmanuel 
College had celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of its 
foundation, " two distinguished alumni of Harvard," said Dr. 
Creighton, " Professor Lowell and Professor Norton, no less by 
the dignity of their presence than by the eloquence of their 
speech, had almost succeeded in converting our festiv^al into a 
celebration of Harvard College in its ancestral soil of England." 
" The connection of Emmanuel College with Harvard Univer- 
sity," he continued, " is an episode of unique picturesqueness 
in academic' annals, and sets Emmanuel College in a con- 
spicuous place in the intellectual history of mankind." ^ 

1 Now Bishop of Peterborough, fellow, and tutor of Merton College, 
Oxford. 

2 Harvard University, s^oth Anniversary, pp. 37, 236. 

3 lb. pp. 277, 303. 



II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 29 

While Harvard thus keeps up her hold on the past, she at 
times somewhat needlessly breaks with old customs. When 
Lowell was appointed Minister to Spain, he wrote to a friend : 
" You must remember that I am '■ H. E.' [His Excellency] 
now myself, and can show a letter with that superscription. I 
dare say I shall enjoy it after I get there, but at present it is 
altogether a bore to be honourabled at every turn. The world 
is a droll affair. And yet, between ourselves, dear Grace, I 
should be pleased if my father could see me in capitals on the 
Triennial Catalogue. You remember Johnson's pathetic letter 
to Chesterfield. How often I think of it as I grow older ! " ^ 
This Catalogue — " such is the rage of innovation " — is no 
longer triennial but quinquennial, and the capitals are no longer 
preserved ; nay, it has suffered still more unworthy treatment, 
for it is now printed in the vulgar tongue. " Since Harvard 
has grown to a University," writes the editor of Lowell's Letters, 
'' the Catalogue has been deprived alike of the dignity of its 
traditional Latin, and of those capitals in which the sons of 
hers who had attained to public official distinction, such as 
that of Member of Congress, or Governor of a State, or Judge 
of a United States Court, were elevated above their fellow- 
students. To have one's name in capitals in the Catalogue 
was a reward worth achieving." Nevertheless, there must have 
been a certain incongruity in a Catalogue in which Caleb Gush- 
ing was printed large, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, William H. 
Prescott, Wendell Phillips, and Oliver Wendell Holmes were 
printed small. 

"^Letters o/y. R. Lozuell, II. 210. "The notice which you have been 
pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind ; but it 
has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am soli- 
tary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it." — Bos- 
well's Life of Johnson, I. 262. 



30 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Harvard, like Oxford, has been the seat of a camp, and has 
seen learning yield to the rough needs of war. It was on the 
Common, not a furlong from the College, beneath the graceful 
branches of an American elm, that, as an inscription shows, 
"Washington first took command of the American army, July 
3, 1775." The Common was not the pleasure-spot that it now 
is, with its green lawn, its groves, and its trim paths. It was 
" an unenclosed dust plain," across which the drovers, on their 
way to Boston market, used to take their herds of cattle. The 
two English cannon stamped G. R., which stand in the middle 
as trophies of war, had not yet been captured. They were 
helping to hold Boston against its own citizens. Not fifty years 
had gone by since the College, in a loyal address, had assured 
another G. R. that " they had shed tears over the grave of the 
great King his Father."^ In July, 1875, the centenary of this 
famous day was celebrated. " We have still standing," wrote 
Lowell, " the elm under which Washington took command of 
the American (till then provincial) army, and under which 
also Whitefield had preached some thirty years before." ^ The 
tree, though broken, still retains much of its gracefulness. 
Among all the spots, famous in the noble history of man's 
struggle for freedom, it is by no means the least worthy of 
veneration. As I stood by it and read the inscription, there 
came into my mind the words of the old English Tory, the 
stern enemy of American Independence — " that man is little 
to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the 
plain of Marathon." This, indeed, was "ground dignified by 
wisdom, bravery, and virtue." Washington, for many months, 
had his headquarters in a fine mansion hard by, which is now 
generally known, not by his name, but by Longfellow's. Here 

^ Quincy's Harvard, I. 383. '^Letters of J. R. Lowell^ II. 159. 



II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 31 

the poet had his quiet home for the greater part of his life. 
Washington's memorials are so many that he can afford to 
yield one to literature. Cedant anna togae. 

Few of the Harvard students had witnessed the great scene 
in the world's drama which had been played beneath the elm. 
Two months earlier the Committee of Safety had dispersed 
them to their homes. It was at Harvard that many years 
earlier Samuel Adams, the cousin of two Presidents of the 
United States, had maintained in a thesis read before the 
College the lawfulness of rebellion. In 1768, seven years 
before the war broke out, the Graduating Class had unani- 
mously voted " to take their degrees in the manufactures of 
the country," and had appeared at Commencement in untaxed 
home-manufactured garments.^ The following year, the Gov- 
ernor of the Commonwealth had attempted to overawe the 
House of Representatives by a display of military force. Can- 
non was pointed at the door of the State House in which they 
met. They refused to continue their sittings. The Governor, 
who had received his orders from England, said that he had 
no authority to take away the troops. He did, however, all 
that a reasonable man could do. Not being able to remove 
the cannon from the Legislature, he removed the Legislature 
from the cannon. He adjourned the House to Harvard Col- 
lege, where it met in the Chapel. One of the Fellows has 
described in a letter written at the time, how " this removal 
hinders the scholars in their studies. The young gentlemen 
are already taken up with politics. They have caught the 
spirit of the times. Their declamations and forensic disputes 
breathe the spirit of liberty. This has always been encouraged, 
but they have sometimes been wrought up to such a spirit of 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 163. 



32 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

enthusiasm, that it has been difficult for their Tutors to keep 
them within close bounds ; but their Tutors are fearful of 
giving too great a check to a disposition which may hereafter 
fill the country with patriots." It was no doubt the memory 
of "this spirit of liberty" which led Governor Hancock to 
speak of Harvard as " in some sense the parent and nurse of 
the late happy Revolution in this Commonwealth." All the 
Massachusetts men who signed the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence were her children. There were, however, a few Tories 
among the undergraduates " who were in the practice of bring- 
ing * Indian tea ' into Commons, and drinking it to show their 
loyalty. The Governors of the Seminary advised them not to 
do it in future, ' as it was a source of grief and uneasiness to 
many of the students, and as the use of it is disagreeable to the 
people of the country in general.' " ^ 

The "enthusiasm " which the Tutors were unwilling to check 
in these youthful patriots broke out in a rebellion within the 
College. While outside the war was raging, the three upper 
Classes assembled in the Hall, and voted to send a memorial 
to the Corporation, in which they charged their President with 
" impiety, heterodoxy, unfitness for the office of preacher of 
the Christian religion, and still more for that of President." 
"There was," writes Quincy, "not a shadow of foundation for 
any of these charges, except the last." A Committee of twelve 
" were appointed to wait upon the President, and invite him to 
resign his office." The poor man, who was ignorant of his 
unpopularity, was so deeply touched that he resolved at once to 
retire. It was on Saturday that the deputation had waited on 
him ; on the following Monday, after morning prayers, he 
detained the students, and told them that he should resign. 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 148, 163, 164, 244. 



II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 33 

" His family, he said, would be thrown destitute on the 
world, and he intimated that resolutions of a favourable 
character might be of service to him. This conduct subdued 
their rebelUous spirits." They met again, and ''with like 
unanimity passed directly opposite resolutions, excepting only 
his unfitness for the office of President."^ The ferment was 
slow in subsiding. Channing, who entered Harvard about 
fifteen years later, describes " a state of great insubordination, 
and the almost total absence of the respect due to individuals 
[the teachers] of so much worth. The French Revolution 
had diseased the imagination and unsettled the understanding 
of men everywhere. The authority of the past was gone."^ 

When, in 1775? hostilities began between the northern 
country and the Colonies, the seat of war in the opening years 
was too near for the peaceful life of a university, and moreover 
the College buildings were needed for barracks. At the end of 
the vacation the students assembled at Concord, fifteen miles 
or so from Cambridge. There lodgings were provided for a 
hundred and twenty-five. Part of the library also was removed 
and arranged on shelves in a private house.^ The Concord 
" turnpike " "* — since dignified by the name of Avenue — crossed 
the Common. It was at Concord that the first shots had been 
fired and the first blood shed. In June of the following year 
the students once more assembled in Harvard. The English 
army had abandoned Boston, and there was no longer an 
enemy in their gates. Their buildings had suffered from the 
military occupation. From the roof of the hall lead had been 
stripped, no doubt to be turned into bullets. Before long, Cam- 

1 Quincy's Harvay'd, II. 179. 

2 Life of IV. E. Channing., I. 59. 3 /^_ \\ 155^ 
* In America turnpike is commonly used for turnpike-road. 

D 



34 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

bridge was again to be crowded, not this time with armed sol- 
diers, but with prisoners of war, the remnant of Burgoyne's army. 
In Lowell's day there were still to be seen in Massachusetts 
Hall the hooks from which had swung the hammocks of the 
red-coats.^ Late last century hooks for a very different pur- 
pose were fixed up in an Oxford College. One of the Fellows 
of University College whom I was visiting many years ago told 
me that he had that day received a letter from an aged clergy- 
man, a former member of the College, asking him to see 
whether in the ceihng of a certain room a couple of hooks 
were still there. From the hooks his hunting-breeches used 
to be suspended, into which he let himself down from a pair 
of steps. They were, according to the fashion, too tight to 
draw on in the ordinary way. 

The blockade of the coast by the Enghsh fleet, cutting off the 
supply of luxuries from abroad, compelled the Corporation to 
pass the following resolutions on August ii, 1777 : — 

" Whereas by law 9th of chap. vi. it is provided, ' that there shall always 
be chocolate, tea, coffee, and milk for breakfast, with bread and biscuit ^ and 
butter,' and whereas the foreign articles above mentioned are now not to 
be procured without great difficulty and at a very exorbitant price; Voted, 
That the Steward shall provide at the common charge only bread or biscuit 
and milk for breakfast; and if any of the scholars choose tea, coffee, or 
chocolate they shall procure those articles for themselves; and likewise the 
sugar and butter to be used with them; and if any scholars choose to have 
their milk boiled, or thickened with flour, if it may be had, or with meal, 
the Steward, having reasonable notice, shall provide it." ^ 

On the day year on which Washington had taken command 
of the American army, the degree of Doctor of Laws was con- 

"^ Literary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, 1890, I. 56. 

2 Biscuit, according to the American use of the word, is hot rolls. 

^ Quincy's Harvard, II. 541. 



II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 35 

ferred on him by Harvard. He was the first man to be thus 
distinguished by the University. It was indeed a noble begin- 
ning of the long line of honours. His diploma described him 
as : — 

" Vir illustrissimus, Georgius Washington, Armiger, Exercitus Colonia- 
rum in America Foederatarum Imperator praeclarus . . . qui, postulante 
Patria sedem in Virginia amoenissimam et res proprias perlubenter reliquit, 
ut . . . Nov-Angliam ab armis Britannorum iniquis et crudelibus liberaret, 
et Colonias casteras tueretur, et qui . . . ab urbe Bostonia . . . naves et 
copias hostium in fugam prsecipitem et probrosam deturebavit,^ adeo ut 
cives, plurimis duritiis et ssevitiis oppressi, tandem salvi latentur, villge 
vicinas quiescant atque sedibus suis Academia nostra restituatur. 

" Sciatis igitur quod nos . . . Dominum supradictum, summo honore 
dignum, Georgium Washington, Doctorem Utriusque Juris, tum Naturae et 
Gentium, tum Civilis, statuimus et creavimus." ^ 

A year earher, a few days before the fight at Concord, Oxford 
had conferred a like degree on Samuel Johnson, on the recom- 
mendation of its Chancellor, the Prime Minister, Lord North, 
in return, there can be little doubt, for Taxation no Tyranny ; 
an Answe?" to the Resolutions and Addf'esses of the Americafi 
Congress. It was thus that " the Whigs of America, Whigs 
fierce for liberty and disdainful of dominion, who multiply with 
the fecundity of their own rattlesnakes,"^ replied to the honour 
conferred by the Tory statesman and the Tory university on 
the Tory pamphleteer. 

Even before the Revolution was brought to an end the 
patriots of Harvard found that, not only in a monarchy but 
also in a democracy, injustice and insolence may have to be 
borne and borne patiently. George III. was down, but Gov- 
ernor Hancock was up. In an evil day for the University that 

1 In this headlong and shameful flight the two cannons that now stand 
on Cambridge Common had been thrown into the harbour. 

2 Quincy's Harvard, II. 506. ^ Boswell's Life of /o/mson, II. 314. 



36 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

favourite of the people had been appointed Treasurer. " He 
embarrassed it during a period of nearly twenty years." He 
would neither discharge the duties of his office nor resign his 
post. The Corporation, after patiently waiting for two or three 
years, appointed his successor. To conciliate the great man 
they passed a vote, that a committee should " wait on the 
Hon. John Hancock, Esq., with the most respectful compli- 
ments of the Corporation, and request that he should permit 
his portrait to be forthwith conveyed to the College, and placed 
in the Philosophy Chamber, by that ,of his late honourable 
uncle." He neither sent his portrait nor settled his accounts. 
He had been " exposed to those severe trials of human char- 
acter, — great wealth suddenly acquired and unbounded and 
long-continued popularity." So powerful was his position that 
the Corporation did not dare to bring him before a court of 
law. They could scarcely have been worse off had they had to 
deal with George HI. himself. It was not till full eleven years 
after their first demand that he condescended to state the 
amount of the balance still owing by him to the College. On 
being pressed for payment he would do nothing more than 
give a bond and security. It was in vain that the distress 
of the Professors was laid before him. Their salaries were 
unpaid, but neither interest nor principal could be got out of 
the great man. He died in 1793, leaving ample means, but 
the debt still owing. It was not till eight or nine years later 
that his heirs discharged it. With some reason does President 
Quincy remark at the end of this strange story : " In republics 
popularity is the form of power most apt to corrupt its pos- 
sessor, and to tempt him, for party ends or personal interest, to 
trample on right, or set principle at defiance."^ 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 182, 203-209, 523. 



II. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 37 

However much Harvard distinguished herself in the long 
struggle for the independence of the Colonies, unhappily she 
did not always range herself on the side of liberty. All 
through the opening scenes of the great struggle between 
freedom and slavery she was the champion of the slave-holder. 
When on one side stood the President and Congress, the 
Legislatures of almost all the States, the judicature, the Civil 
Service, the Churches, the mobs, the wealthy, the cowardly, all 
the " safe " men, all the " moderate " men, and on the other 
side William Lloyd Garrison and his little band, " harsh as 
truth and uncompromising as justice," she chose the part of 
shame. To serve the Union, stained and darkened though it 
was by the Fugitive Slave Law, she was ready to sacrifice 
justice, mercy, and honour. She showed that even in a re- 
public a university is too apt to side with the powers that be 
against the right that ought to be. Not even Oxford and Cam- 
bridge have ever disgraced themselves more than the New 
England University by taking the part of the strong and the 
privileged against the weak and the helpless. What Loyal 
Address to the Crown was more shameful than the toast given 
at the Centennial Celebration in 1836 : " Massachusetts and 
South Carolina; they stood by one another nobly in the 
darkest days of peril and adversity ; may long years of mutual 
prosperity find them undivided." ^ Their mutual prosperity 
was the prosperity of slave-owners and slave-traders, of 
planters who grew cotton by slave-labour, and of merchants 
who dealt in it, and manufacturers who spun it and wove it. 
This prosperity was threatened by a few " fanatical and factious 
Abolitionists," as Daniel Webster called them ; ^ threatened 
far more by the still small voice of conscience, which, under 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 683. ^ njg of Daniel Webster, II. 516. 



38 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

the iipbraidings of these men, was beginning to make itself 
heard in ten thousand bosoms. To silence this voice cant 
was called in at the Banquet, as, in like circumstances, it is 
called in at all times and in all places. After this toast to the 
maintenance of Southern slavery, its maintenance by " the 
grand old Bay State," had been drunk, these Harvard men 
next drank to " civil and religious liberty here and every- 
where." " How is it," old Samuel Johnson roughly asked, 
" How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among 
the drivers of negroes? " Even Lowell, even the author of the 
Biglow Papers, had caught this strong, this rank contagion of 
the gown. Two years after this celebration it fell to his lot to 
write the poem for class day. " I made fun of the Abolition- 
ists in my Class Poem," so he wrote nearly fifty years later.^ 
Nine months before this Harvard undergraduate, in the 
presence of the President, the professors, the students and 
their friends, made fun of these men, one of them, Elijah 
Lovejoy, a minister of religion, had been murdered by a cruel 
mob of citizens — all friends, no doubt, of civil and religious 
liberty, there and everywhere — murdered because, in defiance 
of mob-law, he advocated in a small newspaper the freedom of 
the slave. Four months before this Harvard undergraduate 
made fun of these men, a new Hall built by the Abolitionists 
in the City of Brotherly Love, " dedicated to Free Discus- 
sion, Virtue, Liberty, and Independence," had been burnt to 
the ground by another mob. Three months before this Har- 
vard undergraduate made fun of these men, in the city of 
Boston hard by, another anti-slavery building would have been 
wrecked by a third mob, had it not been for the Mayor, who 
for once — a rare example in those bad days — was ready by 

'^Letters of J. R. Lowell, IL 338. 



II. HARVARD COLLEGE. 39 

military force to protect peaceful citizens meeting in lawful 
assembly.^ " They make a game of my calamities," some 
deeply wronged Abolitionist might have exclaimed, had any 
one of them been present on this Class Day. Lowell's noble 
nature was soon to shake itself free from " Harvard indiffer- 
ence." Before the year came to a close he wrote : " The 
Abolitionists are the only ones with whom I sympathize of the 
present extant parties." Eight years later he described these 
same Abolitionists as '' a body of heroic men and women, 
whom not to love and admire would prove me unworthy of 
either of those sentiments, and whose superiors in all that con- 
stitutes true manhood and womanhood I believe never ex- 
isted." ^ 

It was not in undergraduate days at Harvard that in Wendell 
Phillips was first stirred that passionate eloquence which did 
so much to rouse the land to a sense of its guilt. He had 
passed through the College and the Law School, and was still 
indifferent to the good cause.^ It was perhaps indignation at 
what his Alma Mater had not done for him that moved him to 
exclaim, after the long struggle which ended in Lincoln's first 
election : " The agitation was a yeomanly service to liberty. 
It educated the people. One such canvass makes amends for 
the cowardice of our scholars, and consoles us under the inflic- 
tion of Harvard College." ^ In 1848 Sumner was passing from 
town to town in Massachusetts, speaking in favour of the Free- 
Soil Party. Nowhere but in Cambridge was the meeting dis- 
turbed. There the students *' interrupted him with hisses and 

"^Life of W. L. Garj-isojt, II. 184, 213, 218. 

"^ Letters of y . R. Lowell, I. 37, 123. 

^ Life of Charles Sumner, III. 69. 

4 Wendell Phillips's Speeches^ etc., ed. 1863, p. 306. 



40 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

coarse exclamations. He singled out the leader of the distur- 
bance and said, ' The young man who hisses will regret it ere 
his hairs turn gray.' " Perhaps he recalled it with deep sorrow 
on some lonely day's march with the Northern army, or in all 
the misery of a Southern prison. Longfellow was one of the 
audience. In his journal he recorded : ^ *' Sumner spoke admi- 
rably well. But the shouts and the hisses and the vulgar inter- 
ruptions grated on my ears. I was glad to get away."^ Fif- 
teen months after Sumner was hissed in this New England 
University another New Englander, Daniel Webster, made that 
infamous speech of March 7, 1850, which forever covered with 
shame the name of the greatest American orator. " He is," 
wrote Lowell, " the most meanly and foolishly treacherous man 
I ever heard of." ^ In the idle hope of serving the Union and 
making himself President, the old man was ready in almost 
everything to yield to the Slave States. Slavery was to be 
extended and its foundations were to be laid more firmly 
than ever. The cowardice of scholars was once more seen. 
He was supported by Ticknor, Everett, Sparks, Felton, 
Motley, and Parkman. Even Dana, who at the risk of his 
life defended a runaway slave in the Boston Law Courts, was 
ready to grant the South a Fugitive Slave Law — "a bona 
fide one, but one consistent with laws, decency, safety to the 
free, and the self-respect of the North." ^ Among Harvard 
men of letters Emerson, Sumner, and Lowell stood together, 
and I fear alone, on the right side. The Professors in the Law 
School read lectures in defence of the Fugitive Slave Law. 

^ Life of Charles Sumner, III. 173. 

"^ Life of H. W. Longfello7v,\\. 127. 

3 Letters of J. R. Loxvell, I. 208. 

* Life of Charles Stimner, III. 205, 208, ;/. 4 ; Life of R. H. Dana, I. 126. 



II. » HARVARD COLLEGE. 41 

The students who heard them, untouched by the generous 
feehngs of youth, were no better than their teachers. More 
than a hundred attended the classes. Of these only six were 
on the side of freedom ; "the rest were nearly all bitter against 
the Free-Soil Party." ^ On May 14, 185 1, Longfellow recorded 
in \\\?> Journal : " Went to hear Emerson on the Fugitive Slave 
Law at the Cambridge City Hall. ... It is rather painful to 
see Emerson in the arena of politics hissed and hooted at by 
young law students."- After the ruffian Brooks's cruel assault 
on Sumner in the Senate, when all that was not base in America 
was fired with indignation, it was Amherst College that at once 
conferred an honorary degree on the much-suffering man. His 
own Aiwa Maler let three years pass by before she honoured 
him. No degree was ever conferred on William Lloyd Garri- 
son either at Harvard or anywhere else.^ Universities, with 
their strong spirit of conservatism, are always slow to honour 
the men who raise the unwilling world to a higher level of 
morality. If anything could wash away this stain from Harvard, 
it was the blood of her sons so freely shed on many a battle- 
field of the great war. But in spite of their generous devotion 
the stain remains. In the long struggle for freedom it was not 
till it entered upon its last and greatest act that the oldest and 
the first of American universities was found in the van. 

1 Life of Charles Siiimier, III. 207, 246, n. 2. 
'^Life of H. W. Longfellow, II. 194. 

^ In 1 865 he was made an honorary member of the Harvard Phi 
Beta Kappa. 



CHAPTER III. 

Religious Liberty. — The Divinity School. — The College Chapel. — The 
Dudleian Lectures. — The English Liturgy. 

IF, to civil liberty, Harvard at one time showed herself in- 
different, in religious liberty she has taken the lead of all 
the older universities of the English-speaking race. Happily, 
even in her first charter, she was free from the predominance 
of any single church. Had the College been founded in Rhode 
Island, where Roger Williams and his followers gave the world 
the first example of a government founded on the principles 
of complete religious liberty, such freedom would not have 
been astonishing. In Plymouth, from the Pilgrim Fathers, 
the Separatists of England, the founders of the Independent 
Churches, some measure of tolerance might have been looked 
for. But in Boston, among the stern Puritans, where State 
and Church were one, where none but members of the Church 
were freemen of the State, who would not have expected to 
find President, Fellows, and students all bound fast by a rigid 
test? This freedom, it has been conjectured, was due 
rather to a careless feeling of security than to intention. 
The constitution of the Commonwealth itself might be trusted 
"to bind their souls with secular chains." If such was the 
security of the founders of Harvard College, they forgot that 
the charter of a colony was liable to change. Theirs was 

annulled by the tyranny of Charles II. in those evil days 

42 



CHAP. III. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 43 



towards the end of his reign, when Jeffreys, in his progress 
through English towns, was " making all the charters, like the 
walls of Jericho, fall down before him." In the new charter, 
granted in 1692 by William and Mary, property, not church- 
membership, was made the qualification for a vote.^ The 
door, if not thrown open for the entrance of free thought, was, 
at all events, unbarred. For many a long day there was to 
be little of freedom as it was understood by Roger Williams 
of the seventeenth century, and by us of the latter years of 
the nineteenth. Nevertheless, so great was the alarm given 
to the orthodox that Yale College was founded in the hope 
that from it might flow a never-failing spring of untainted 
Calvinism.^ From the servitude that was then imposed, that 
university has no more shaken herself wholly free than has 
Oxford from the servitude of Anglicanism. Both have done 
much, but both have still much to do. Even at the present 
day. Harvard is regarded by Yale as the London University 
used to be regarded by the orthodox of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge. It is "the Godless university." Harvard retorts on 
Yale that it is the home of superstition and Phariseeism. A 
writer in the Harvard Cri??tson^ S2iys: "Yale friends naturally 
accuse Harvard students of being irreligious; while Harvard 
advocates call the Yale religious life hypocrisy." 

From the time when the new charter was granted to the 
Colony, Harvard, in matters of theology, has kept pace with 
the people, its thoughts widening as their thoughts widened. 
The President and Fellows would often, indeed, have moved 
faster, but they were restrained by the Board of Overseers, 

1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 55; The Beginning of Nezv England, by John 
Fiske, 1893, pp. 264, 275. 

2 Quincy's Harvard, I. 197. . ^ June 23, 1893. 



44 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

on which the Congregational ministers of Cambridge and the 
five nearest towns sat by right. In 1820, when the constitu- 
tion of Massachusetts was revised, even the overseers were 
ahead of the people in liberal thought. They proposed to 
admit ministers of all denominations of Christians to these 
clerical seats, but in a popular vote this proposition was re- 
jected.-^ Fourteen years later, in 1834, an act was passed by 
the Legislature of Massachusetts, which enabled the two gov- 
erning bodies of the University to effect this reform. One or 
other of these bodies was now behind , the people, perhaps 
both; for it was not till 1843 that they availed themselves of 
their powers.^ By the Act of 1851, all clerical restrictions 
were removed, not a single seat on the Board being any longer 
confined to the ministry.^ 

As in Massachusetts, Calvinism had gradually softened into 
Unitarianism, so Harvard had gradually become, if not a 
Unitarian College, a College of Unitarians. Judge Story's 
father, who was born in 1743, was not sent to Harvard, writes 
his son, " lest he should there imbibe those heretical tenets, 
which, in the form of Arminianism, were then supposed to 
haunt those venerable shades." The judge, who went to the 
College, shook himself free from his Calvinism, and was sev- 
eral times President of the American Unitarian Association.^ 
It was by Unitarians that the Divinity School was founded 
in 1 81 6. In its constitution, "the following article was a 
fundamental one : ' It being understood that every encourage- 
ment be given to the serious, impartial, and unbiassed inves- 
tigation of Christian truth, and that no assent to the peculiari- 
ties of any denomination of Christians be required either of 

^ Quincy's LLarvard, II. 332. 2 Hai-vard Catalogue, p. 24. 

2 Lb. 4 j^ij-g of Joseph Siory, I. 2, 57. 



III. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 45 

the Students, or professors, or instructors. ' " ^ The School was, 
however, "regarded as distinctively Unitarian, and so caused 
uneasiness to the government of the University on account of 
its denominational position. As the College began to take 
its position as an unsectarian institution, it seemed a hin- 
drance in its course that a Unitarian Divinity School should 
be attached to it. It was felt that, in the public estimate, 
the School would give a denominational aspect to the whole 
University."^ An attempt was accordingly made to separate 
it from the College. "An enabling act was passed by the 
Legislature in 1858, but the project of separation was never 
carried further. It was conceded that it would be false to all 
our traditions, if, in a College named for ^ a Puritan minister, 
fostered by a Puritan clergy, and bearing on its corporate seal 
the motto Chris to et Ecclesice, religion should be the only 
subject deliberately excluded.'"* In 1878 the movement set 
the other way, and a large sum of money was raised for the 
further endowment of the School. "The Harvard Divinity 
School," said Professor Eliot on this occasion, "is not dis- 
tinctively Unitarian either by its constitution or by the inten- 
tion of its founders. The government of the University can- 
not undertake to appoint none but Unitarian teachers, or to 
grant any peculiar favours to Unitarian students." So far 
was it from doing so, that in 1887, of the six professors in 
the theological Faculty, two were Baptists and one an Ortho- 
dox Congregationalist, while of the eleven members compos- 
ing the visiting committee, not half were Unitarians.^ Never- 

^ Quincy's LLarvard, 11. 546. 

2 Professor C. C. Everett quoted in LLigher Education in Massachusetts^ 
by G. G. Bush, p. 144. 

3 An American says " named /2?r" where we say " named after. ^^ 
^Higher Education, etc., p. 141. ^ lb. p. 144. 



46 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

theless, in spite of this mixture of creeds, in spite of the fact 
that three of the professors orthodoxly, if not practically, 
believed that the other three were doomed to " the everlasting 
bonfire, " the President could say in his Annual Report : " There 
is no more harmonious f'aculty in the University, and none 
more completely devoted to the unbiassed search for truth." ^ 
Verily, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the days seem already 
to have come when " the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and 
the leopard shall lie down with the kid." 

However much the College was once given over to Unitari- 
anism, the President and Fellows fifty-six years ago showed 
that they entertained something of a superstitious feeling in 
the use of their Chapel. Longfellow, one of the most reli- 
gious of men, writing to his father about his work at Harvard 
as a professor, said : " I am now upon Dante — unwritten lec- 
tures; but I have petitioned the Corporation for the use of 
the Chapel next summer for a course of written public lectures. 
By public, I mean free to any and every one who chooses to 
attend, whether in college or out of college." He no doubt 
asked for the Chapel as the only available place. Six weeks 
later he recorded in his Jou7'nal : "The President told me that 
the Corporation would not allow me the use of the Chapel for 
public lectures in the summer. They do not approve my 
plan. So it ends." '^ 

Professor Goodwin, looking forward to the position that 
Harvard is likely to hold before many years have gone by, 
says : " She will be fully equipped for the best work in every de- 
partment, in Theology, in Law, in Medicine, and in the Arts 
and Sciences. I think we may be sure that she will always 

1 ILigher Education, etc., p. 145. 

'^ Life of LL. IV. Longfellow^ 1886, I. 275, 282. 



III. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 47 



represent the foremost progress of science, and will always 
welcome the boldest speculation on every subject. No party 
nor sect will control her teaching, to cause either the pro- 
mulgation of unscientific dogmas or the suppression of scien- 
tific truth. I need hardly say that no exception will be made 
in this respect for philosophy, political science, or even theol- 
ogy. Public opinion is fast settling this matter beyond the 
reach of controversy. Parties and sects will, of course, preach 
their own doctrines and creeds then in their own schools, as 
they do now; but the true university can recognize only the 
free and unbiassed search for truth for the truth's sake. Hap- 
pily we have no antiquated statutes or traditions to sweep 
away to prepare us for the coming age. Our ancient motto 
Veritas stands always over our own gates, and we interpret it 
by the principle of freedom. 'Prove all things; hold fast to 
that which is good.' "^ The Professor seems somewhat con- 
veniently to forget the other ancient motto, Christo et Ecclcsice. 
In the Sunday and week-day services of the College Chapel 
the same impartiality is shown as in the Divinity School. Five 
preachers of eminence, from among the ministers of all de- 
nominations, are chosen every year " to arrange and conduct 
the religious services of the University. Each conducts daily 
morning prayers for about three weeks in the first half-year 
and about three weeks in the second half-year, and each 
preaches on four Sunday evenings." ^ Dr. Herford, an Eng- 
lish Unitarian divine, was for some years one of the five. 
The preachers for the present year are a bishop of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church, a Congregationalist, two Episcopa- 
lians, and a Unitarian. 

1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 40. 

2 Catalogue, p. 478. 



48 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Among those of past years was Bishop Phillips Brooks, 
whose early death I found everywhere mourned in Massachu- 
setts, and in whose memory a meeting was last year held in 
the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. On the Sunday 
evenings when none of the five officiates, the pulpit is filled 
by a Select Preacher, to use the Oxford designation. Among 
these, in 1892, were Bishop Vincent, the Right Rev. H. C. 
Potter, and Professor Drummond of Glasgow. In the spring 
of the present year, a Roman Catholic priest — a former stu- 
dent of Harvard — officiated for the first time. The prayers 
which he recited were collects translated from the Latin, and 
the lesson which he read was, as he remarked, from the mass 
for the day. His sermon was a philosophical argument for 
faith in the Supernatural. Of the Supernatural he gave no 
definition. A fortnight later, the pulpit was' filled by Pro- 
fessor Felix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Societies — a 
teacher who would hardly call himself a theist. For those 
students who care to attend the services of the sects to which 
they belong, seats are provided in the Cambridge churches, 
at the expense of the College. 

Of the great libe-rality of the University in religious matters 
the following curious instance was given me. A son of Joseph 
Dudley, who was Governor of the Colony in the first years of 
the eighteenth century, founded a lectureship in divinity. 
Four lectures were to be delivered every year on certain sub- 
jects strictly laid down in the trust-deed, one being, "the 
idolatry, errors, and superstitions of the Romish Church." 
As the value of money fell, the lecturer's payment became so 
small that for many years the course was discontinued while 
the fund accumulated. The College at one time thought of 
getting an act passed by which it should be applied to some 



Ill, , HARVARD COLLEGE. 49 

other purpose. They were deterred by the reflection that 
such a measure might be a check to endowments and bequests 
in a country where the general sentiment as to the sanctity of 
the wishes of founders and testators is usually strong. The 
trustees, it was found, were willing to interpret the provisions 
of the trust somewhat laxly. By spreading the course of four 
lectures over as many years, they were able to offer an annual 
payment sufftcient to secure on each occasion a preacher who 
would not disgrace the University. Their first appointment 
was the Professor of Ecclesiastical History, who, to comply 
with the testator's direction, took for his subject the errors of 
Romanism, treating them historically. The third lecture, 
also in compliance with the terms of the foundation, was " for 
the confirmation, illustration, and improvement of the great 
articles of the Christian religion, properly so called." It 
was delivered by the Right Rev. Bishop John J. Keane, rector 
of the Roman Catholic University of America.^ 

Till recent years the attendance at the College Chap^el was 
compulsory. Under this system, there was even greater irre- 
verence than was to be seen in an Oxford Chapel in the days 
when we had to "keep" so many chapels a week, and when 
"chapelling" was used as a form of punishment. In my 
College, and I believe in most others, an undergraduate was 
expected to attend chapel eight times a week — " to keep 
eigfit chapels," as we called it. If in his Freshman's year he 
was regular, he might in his later terms become laxer in his 
attendance, especially if his general conduct was good. The 
penalty for too great laxness was "chapelling." He who 
was "chapelled" had to attend morning and evening service 
during a period fixed by the Dean. These services were the 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 139; Catalogue, 1891-92, p. no. 
E 



50 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

full services of the Church; prayers for the Queen, Royal 
Family, and High Court of Parliament included. At Harvard 
last century, attendance and good behaviour were enforced by 
the following fines : — 

Absence from prayers two pence 

Tardiness at prayers one penny 

Absence from public worship nine pence 

Tardiness at public worship three pence 

Ill-behaviour at public worship not exceeding nine pence 

Neglect to repeat the sermon nine pence ^ 

In my time, at Oriel College, then under the rule of that 
model of formality and preciseness, Provost Hawkins, the 
undergraduates, as I was informed by one of the scholars, 
were each required to "repeat" the University sermon, or at 
all events to send in to their tutor a report of it. Many of 
them used to meet after dinner on the Sunday evening, and 
there, over their cigars and whisky and water, write out the 
sermon by the aid of one or two who had been present at 
St. Mary's. Perhaps some of the "repeating" at Harvard 
was done on the same system. 

Stories are told of the pranks played of old by the students. 
Sometimes in the candles which lighted the pulpit, holes were 
bored and gunpowder was inserted so as to cause an explosion 
during the sermon. One day a cracker was fastened to the 
Bible. The Bible itself was thrice stolen. Once it tvas 
sent, stripped of its binding, to the librarian of Yale College, 
with a dog-Latin inscription on the fly-leaf, in which it was 
stated: "Coveres servamus in usum chessboardi pro Helter 
Skelter Club." The tongue of the Chapel bell was removed; 
"the seats allotted to the Freshmen were painted green; 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 499. 



III. HARVARD COLLEGE. 51 

Stripes like those on a barber's pole were painted on the 
porch of the Chapel." In fact, the Harvard boys behaved 
just as ill as Christ Church men. . The irreverence was no 
doubt mainly due to the length and frequency of the services. 
As if they were not trying enough in themselves, theological 
dissertations by divinity students were frequently read aloud 
after evening prayers. In a single year the undergraduates 
suffered under thirty-two such inflictions.^ It sometimes 
happened that the minister who conducted the service by his 
eccentricity provoked mirth. I was told of one old President 
who, when his mind was failing, one morning astonished the 
congregation by praying that " their intemperance might be 
turned into temperance, and their industry into dustry." 
In Yale far greater decorum seems to have been maintained. 
Professor Thacher, in his Life of Benjamin Silliman, writing 
of the years 1831 to 1835, tells how "the students, at the close 
of the services in the Chapel, always waited respectfully for 
the Professors to pass between their ranks and leave the house 
first. Professor Silliman took the lead, receiving the bows 
of the Seniors and Freshmen successively with all the stateli- 
ness and easy grace of a man born to head a procession." ^ 

A happy chance, wisely turned to account, gave the first 
blow in Harvard to compulsory attendance at religious ser- 
vices. In 1872-73, the Chapel was closed for alterations, 
and morning prayer was discontinued for some months. 
President Eliot in his report for that year said : — 

" The Faculty thus tried, quite involuntarily, an interesting experiment 
in College discipline. It has been a common opinion that morning prayers 
were not only right and helpful in themselves, but also necessary to College 

'^ An Histoi'ical Sketch, etc., by W. R. Thayer, p. 45. 
2 Vol. II. p. 341. 



52 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

discipline, partly as a morning roll-call and partly as a means of enforcing 
continuous residence. It was therefore interesting to observe that the 
omission of morning prayers for nearly five months, at the time of year 
when the days are shortest and coldest, had no ill effects whatever on Col- 
lege order or discipline. There was no increased irregularity of attendance 
at morning exercises, no unusual number of absences, and, in fact, no visi- 
ble effect upon the other exercises of the College, or upon the quiet and 
order of the place. The Professors and other teachers living beyond the 
sound of the prayer-bell would not have known from any effect produced 
upon their work with the students that morning prayers had been inter- 
mitted." 1 

The President and Fellows, using their common sense, 
passed a vote that attendance at Chapel should henceforth be 
voluntary. The overseers, not using theirs, exercised their 
right of veto. Some relaxation was however made; what is 
called the thin edge of the wedge by all enemies of liberty 
and progress was inserted, and, at last, in 1886, every student 
was left free to worship God when and where he pleased, or 
not to worship him at all. The result has been all that might 
have reasonably been expected, and all that could have been 
desired. "The average attendance at morning prayers is 
upwards of two hundred. The service is a reverent and de- 
lightful one." "Students no longer come rushing into Chapel 
attired only in a mackintosh and rubber boots [goloshes], nor 
do they finish their breakfast in the pews instead of reading 
the responses."^ The service begins with the reading of a 
psalm by the minister and students, in alternate verses, not 
unhappily from the beautiful version in our Book of Common 
Prayer, and is followed by an anthem sung by the choir. 
" Sometimes a solo or duet is sung instead. After this comes 
the reading of the Bible, with comments by the preacher and a 

1 An Historical Sketch, etc., p. 46. 

'^ Higher Education, etc., p. 148 ; Harvard'' s Better Self, by W. R. 
Bigelow, p. 4. 



III. HARVARD COLLEGE. 53 

prayer. It is the preacher's share in the exercises that is most 
unique and most attractive. To listen every morning for two 
weeks to the eloquent words of Dr. Phillips Brooks, full of the 
'beauty of holiness '; for another two weeks to search out the 
distinctive features of the Old Testament books, as they are 
explained by Dr. Lyman Abbott; to hear a glowing eulogy of 
Moses from the lips of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, and to fol- 
low him as he points out the greatness of the Bible heroes 
from morning to morning; — these are high privileges, and 
they are attractions." ^ 

In Harvard there is that ignorant dread of sameness in 
the services of religion which in England, in recent years, 
has led to the multiplication of hymns and hymn-books. The 
great masters of our language who gave us the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer had a better understanding of the human heart. 
They had no fear lest perfect compositions, the ninety- 
fifth psalm, the Te Deum, the four daily collects should 
pall by repetition. Cranmer, whose ear for the melody of 
prose has surely never been surpassed, did not vary the 
close of matins and vespers. Who could grow weary of 
that exquisite cadence in which the most beautiful of all 
liturgies dies, as it were, away — "granting us in this world 
knowledge of Thy truth, and in the world to come life ever- 
lasting." However much we suffered in our childhood from 
the services piled one on the other — Ossa on Pelion and 
Pelion on leafy Olympus — and from the long and tedious 
sermons, who ever grew weary of Bishop Ken's morning hymn, 
with which, in so many churches in the old days, each Sun- 
day's service always began, and of his evening hymn which 
brought the afternoon service to a close ? On a winter day, 

1 Harva7'd 's Better Self, by W. R. Bigelow, p. 2, 



54 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. hi. 

when the darkness which had fallen on the congregation 
seemed only the deeper and the more solemn from the two 
candles which lighted the preacher in the pulpit, how much 
was the heart touched by the words so beautiful in their sim- 
plicity, which Sunday after Sunday, and year after year, had 
been sung by eight generations of men ! In all religious ser- 
vices, everything that is new is out of place. It is only the old 
familiar words, the words which we first heard we know not 
when, that deeply move us. We no more wish for fresh forms 
of prayer than at the close of each winter we wish for a fresh 
form of spring. To hear over and over again a beautiful 
liturgy and the finest passages in the glorious English of our 
Bible, is in itself the best of all trainings in the use of our 
noble language. At no time in our history has there been 
greater need of that constant repetition, that replication of 
the noblest sounds, which imperceptibly but surely trains the 
ear to melody. At no time has there been so much varied 
reading, reading far too often of careless, extravagant, 
affected, and mongrel English. When books were rare, and 
newspapers rarer still, a few great authors were read again and 
again. On great writers our fathers' style became modelled. 
"Glowing eulogies of Moses" can surely be left to the Rev. 
Dr. Harwoods of the world, the man who in his Liberal Trans- 
lation of the Neiv Testament, by expanding Jesus wept into 
Jesus, the Saviour of the world, burst into a flood of tears, 
provoked Johnson's indignant outcry of Puppy/ Outside of 
the universities there are Rev. Dr. Harwoods enough in the 
present day — certainly in England and, I have little doubt, 
in America. Moses needs no eulogy beyond the English ver- 
sion of his books. In the first chapter of Genesis, in the 
story of Joseph, and in the thunders of Sinai, his praises are 
written for all time. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Punishments and Fines. — " The Ancient Customs." — Fagging and 
" Hazing." — Tutors and Undergraduates. — Rebellions. 

IN Harvard an undergraduate who has any touch about him 
of the antiquary or historian finds much to interest him in 
the usages of the past. He finds a minuteness of discipline 
which is scarcely excelled by that contained in the book 
which the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford handed to me and to 
each of my companions when we matriculated, with the follow- 
ing address : Scitote vos in matriculain hiijus Universitatis 
hodie relatos esse sub hac conditione, nempe tit omnia statuta 
hoc libro coniprehensa p7'o virili observetis. If we ever examined 
these statutes, it was certainly not for the sake of keeping them, 
but of mocking them. At Harvard, where the age of the stu- 
dents was younger, corporal punishment was kept up for nearly 
a hundred years longer than in the English universities. I 
doubt whether at Oxford any was inflicted later than the reign 
of Charles II. About 1680 " the poor children " — the servitors 
that is to say, or foundationers of Queen's College — were sen- 
tenced to be whipped. It does not seem, however, that the 
punishment was actually executed. ^ In the New England 
University it was gradually discontinued, and by about the 
middle of last century came to an end. Its place had been 
taken by an elaborate system of fines. In them scales, as it 

^ Hist. Comm. MSS Fleming AISS, pp. 166, 168. 
55 



56 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

were, are given by which we can ascertain the comparative 

weight of sins in New England in the first half of the eighteenth 

century. Omitting the fines for regulating conduct at Chapel, 

which I have already quoted, and some others, it stands as 

follows : — 

d 
" Absence from Professor's public lecture 4 

Profanation of Lord's Day, not exceeding 3.0 

Undergraduates tarrying out of town without leave, not exceeding /^r 

diem 1.3 

Going out of College without proper garb, not exceeding 6 

Frequenting taverns, not exceeding ■ 1.6 

Profane cursing, not exceeding 2.6 

Graduates playing cards, not exceeding 5.0 

Undergraduates playing cards, not exceeding 2.6 

Selling and exchanging without leave, not exceeding 1.6 

Lying, not exceeding 1.6 

Drunkenness, not exceeding 1.6 

Going upon the top of the College 1.6 

Tumultuous noises 1.6 

Tumultuous noises, second offence 3.0 

Refusing to give evidence 3,0 

Rudeness at meals i .0 

Keeping guns, and going on skating 1,0 

Fighting, or hurting persons, not exceeding 1.6" ^ 

It is interesting to see that for a graduate to play at cards 
was three times and a third as wicked as for an undergraduate 
to lie, and that to go skating was two-thirds as immoral as get- 
ting drunk. I was told that thirty years or so ago " tumultuous 
noises" were raised not only in the Yard but even in the classes, 
while rough horse-play often went on. For some while past 
all this has been looked on as "bad form," and is no longer 
practised. " Nothing," says a writer in the Crimson, " could 
show a greater contrast than the comparative stillness of the 

^Quincy's Harvard, IL 499. 



IV. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 57 



Yale Campus ^ and the Harvard Yard. In front of the Harvard 
buildings no one yells ' Fire,' or blows a horn ; men do not 
shout for a friend under his room. A Harvard man would not 
be able to understand the Yale fondness for pure noise." 

The three shillings fine for " refusing to give evidence " per- 
haps dates back to the rule of the second President, the divine 
stubborn in the faith of adult baptism by immersion, who, when 
consulted about the lawfulness of inflicting torture, replied : 
" But now if ye question be mente of inflicting bodyly torments 
to extracte a confession from a mallefactor, I conceive yt in 
maters of higest consequence, such as doe concerne ye saftie 
or ruine of stats or countries, magistrats may proceede so farr 
in bodily torments as racks, hote-irons, &c., to extracte a con- 
ffession, especially when presumptions are strounge ; but other- 
wise by no means. God sometimes bids a sinner till his 
wickedness is filled up." ^ 

" The Ancient Customs of Harvard College established by 
the Government of it" bore hard on the Freshmen, who were 
little better than the fags of an English Public School. 

" No Freshmen," we read, " shall wear his hat in the College 
Yard, unless it rains, hails, or snows, provided he be on foot 
and have not both his hands full. 

" No Freshman shall speak to a Senior with his hat on. 

" All Freshmen . . . shall be obliged to go on any errand for 
any of his Seniors, graduates or undergraduates, at any time, 
except in studying hours, or after nine o'clock in the evening. 

" A Senior Sophister has authority to take a Freshman from 

iThe precincts of a university, known as the Yard in Harvard, are in 
most American universities called the Campus. 

2 Governor Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation (INIass. Hist. 
Soc. 4th S. in. 396). 



58 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

a Sophomore, a Middle Bachelor from a Junior Sophister, a 
Master from a Senior, and any Governor of the College from a 
Master. 

" When any person knocks at a Freshman's door except in 
studying time, he shall immediately open the door, without 
inquiring who is there. 

" The Freshmen shall furnish batts, balls and foot-balls for 
the use of the students, to be kept at the Buttery. 

" The Sophomores shall publish these customs to the Fresh- 
men in the Chapel, whenever ordered by any in the Govern- 
ment of the College, at which time the Freshmen are required 
to keep their places in their seats, and attend with decency to 
the reading." ^ 

The unfortunate Freshman with a Senior Sophister calling to 
him from one quarter, a Sophomore from a second, a Middle 
Bachelor from a third, a Junior Sophister from a fourth, a Mas- 
ter from a fifth, a Governor of the College from a sixth, must 
have been far more distracted even than Francis in Shake- 
speare's Henry IV., of whom the stage-direction says : '' The 
drawer stands amazed, not knowing which way to go." 

Others beside the Freshmen were made to show respect for 
their superiors by going bareheaded in their presence. " No 
undergraduate shall wear his hat in the College Yard, when any 
of the Governors of the College are there ; and no Bachelor 
shall wear his hat when the President is there." 

A Fellow of St. John's College, describing Oxford at about 
the same period, says : " The principal thing required is ex- 
ternal respect from the Juniors, however ignorant or unworthy 
a Senior Fellow may be, yet the slightest disrespect is treated 
as the greatest crime of which an academic can be guilty." ^ 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 539. ^ Boswell's Life of Johnson, III. 13, n. 3. 



iv. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 59 



For these regulations about hats the republican spirit of Har- 
vard, quickened, if not called forth by the Revolution, became 
too strong. About the beginning of the present century formal 
permission was given to the students to wear their hats in 
the Yard, no matter who might be present.^ As regards the 
custom of going bareheaded, a singular change has taken place 
in Oxford. In my undergraduate days every one wore his col- 
lege cap in the quadrangle, even though he had not on his 
gown. About twenty years ago men began to go about bare- 
headed inside their college gate, even though their gowns were 
on their shoulders. Gradually the liberties, if I may use the old 
term, of each college were curiously extended. One day I 
noticed an undergraduate in his gown walking bareheaded in the 
Broad Street. I was told that, beyond all doubt, he was a Bal- 
liol man ; as Balliol men assume that all the street in front of 
their College belongs to Balliol, in spite of the impertinence of 
the citizens who claim and maintain a right of way. In like 
manner a Queen's College man walks bareheaded across the 
High Street to the Schools.^ 

The rule at Harvard which required a Freshman at once to 
open his door on hearing a knock deprived youth of one of its 
highest satisfactions. How great was our pride when, for the 
first time in our lives, we felt that in our case an Englishman's 
house was his castle ; when we closed our inner and our outer 
door and knew that, whoever might knock, law and custom 
alike justified us in remaining silent and secluded.^ It is with 
regret I learn that this good old custom in some colleges has 

1 Quincy's LLarvard, II. 278. 

2 The building in which the examinations are held. 

3 The outer door is solidly made, and opening outward, and having no 
handle, cannot be forced without the greatest violence. To close it was, 
and I suppose is still called in college slang, "to sport one's oak." 



60 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

passed away, and that in them no undergraduate, of whatever 
standing he may be, presumes to close his outer door. Bores 
and idlers have gained the day. All their tediousness they can 
now bestow on their neighbours. 

In 1760 the Corporation passed a law which would have 
greatly limited fagging ; but it was vetoed by the overseers.^ 
Judge Story says that this bad custom was dying out when he 
entered Harvard in 1794. "I believe," he adds, "my own 
Class was the first that was not compelled, at the command of 
the Senior Class, to perform the drudgery of the most humble 
services." " My father," writes the Judge's son, " was very 
active in this reform. He invited his own fag to his room, 
treated him with cordiahty, and made him his friend."- Fag- 
ging subsided into what is known in American colleges as 
hazing — horse-play, more or less brutal, to which Freshmen are 
subjected. "President Quincy,"^ writes Professor Peabody, 
" laboured persistently to establish it as a rule that the students 
of Harvard College should be held amenable to the civil 
authority for crimes against the law of the land, even though 
committed within academic precincts. The habits of the 
students were rude, and outrages, involving not only large 
destruction of property, but peril of life — as, for instance, the 
blowing up of pubhc rooms in inhabited buildings — were 
occurring every year. Mr. Quincy was sustained by the Gov- 
erning Boards, but encountered an untold amount of hostility 
and obloquy from the students, their friends, and the outside 
public. He persevered, and gradually won over the best pub- 
lic opinion to his view. The principle is still admitted, and I 
cannot but think that it ought to be practically recognized with 

1 Quincy's Ilai'vard, II. 134. 2 j^ij-^ of Joseph Story, I. 49. 

3 President of Harvard from 1829 to 1845. 



IV. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 61 

regard to all forms of misconduct that are punishable outside 
of the college walls. While the detestable practice of hazing 
was rife, crimes that were worthy of the penitentiary were of 
frequent occurrence, resulting in some cases in driving a perse- 
cuted Freshman from college ; in many instances, in serious and 
lasting injury ; and once, at least, in fatal illness. The usual 
college penalty punished the parents alone. The suspended ^ 
student was escorted in triumph on his departure and his return, 
and was the hero of his class for the residue of his college life. 
I remember an instance in which a timid Freshman had his 
room forcibly entered at midnight, his valuables stolen, and a 
bucket of cold water poured upon him as he lay trembling in 
his bed. Had the perpetrators of that crime been certain that, 
in case of detection, they would be indicted for burglary, and 
punished by a year or two of imprisonment, they would no 
more readily have broken into a Freshman's room than into a 
jeweller's shop." " 

If this was the treatment that awaited the Freshman, the 
tears of fathers, mothers, and sisters, in the midst of which he 
left home, as described in Fail- Harvard, are not surprising. 
It was, with good reason, Launce over again — " my mother 
weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, 
our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great 
perplexity." 

It would not be amiss if in our own universities the worst 
forms of outrage were made amenable to the civil authority. 
The drunken boating-men, who, only two summers ago, broke 
into one of the Oxford colleges, and in a wild riot laid property 
waste, would have been more fitly punished by a jail than by 
a money penalty. The heavy fine that was inflicted on the 

^ Rusticated. ^ LLarvard Reminiscences, p. 31. 



62 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

ringleader was raised by a subscription among the undergradu- 
ates of the very College which he had outraged. He, not to 
be wanting in magnanimity, presented its Boating Club with a 
silver bowl. What but a prison should have been the fate of 
the Christ Church men, who, some years earlier, broke into the 
Library, and brought from it an ancient statue which they cast 
into a bonfire? In another large College, of late years men 
have more than once shown themselves the fellows of the 
ruffians who not long ago carried terror into the West End of 
London. Ruffianism, wherever found, , whether in the courts 
of a college or in the streets of a town, should meet with the 
same stern treatment. Indulged, or feebly treated, it may, in 
our ancient universities, lead to some terrible disaster — to loss 
of life or destruction by fire of some noble and venerable 
building. 

In Oxford, as in Harvard, " the suspended student " — the 
rusticated undergraduate — is sometimes escorted in triumph 
on his departure. A few years ago a ridiculous scene was wit- 
nessed in Broad Street — a long procession of thirty or forty 
cabs, following, at a foot-pace, some great but luckless hero, 
who, for a season, was exiled from his University. 

"Hazing" — to use the American term — in its less brutal 
form is not unknown at the present day in Oxford. In every 
college this rude horse-play may break out from time to time, 
and in some few within the last forty years it has, for short 
periods, been carried to a shameful height. Those, however, 
who have suffered from it are few indeed compared with the 
whole mass of undergraduates. In my own College I can re- 
call but one solitary instance of persecution. The victim was 
singularly unfit for a university. Even in a Quakers' College 
he would have been made a butt. Though " hazing" is still rife 



IV. * HARVARD COLLEGE. 63 

in many American universities, it has died out in Harvard. 
With " window-smashing and disturbing a lecture-room, it is," 
writes Professor G. H. Pahiier, " a thing of the past." ^ It was 
in the autumn of 1878 that the last man was hazed. 

During my stay in Cambridge there was a slight revival of 
a custom which seemed to have almost passed away. On the 
first Monday of the academic year, known as " Bloody Mon- 
day " in many American colleges, it has been the habit for the 
Sophomores — the second year's men — to " rush " the Fresh- 
men. Between these two classes there exists, why I know not, 
" an instinctive antagonism." At Oxford there is nothing that 
exactly corresponds to the American Sophomore, " a being who 
at best has his peculiarities," and is full of " a sense of self-suf- 
ficiency."^ Our second year's men are in no way a peculiar 
people. The peculiarities and self-sufficiency would be more 
commonly found in the Freshmen, at all events in their second 
or third term. So great at Harvard used to be the antagonism 
between the two classes that to the timid Freshman this first 
Monday was a night of " terrors and torments." ^ The more 
daring met their enemies openly in the Yard. Each set formed 
in ranks, nine rows deep, with arms locked. On the signal 
being given, they met together in a rush. In the scuffle bloody 
noses were sometimes given, clothes torn, and hats carried off 
as lawful booty. The Freshmen were let to know that there 
was no surer way of gaining admittance into some of the more 
exclusive clubs than by a display of prowess on this great night. 
A pair of black eyes, heroically earned, would have made their 
proud possessor welcomed with acclamation. As the Harvard 

1 The Nezu Education, by G. H. Palmer, Boston, 1887, p. 28. 

2 The New Education, p. 88. 

^ An Historical Sketch, etc., by W. R. Thayer, p. 50. 



64 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Yard is not enclosed by a wall, rough fellows from outside, 
when once the tumult began, could easily take part in it. Last 
year, after a long interval of peace, these hostile lines were 
once more formed, though neither was the combat waged with 
the high spirit of old, nor were more than a small number out 
of the two classes engaged. I was told by a student that a 
knot of outsiders had been seen waiting, who no doubt at once 
joined in. He added that a force of twenty policemen had 
been present, who had "batoned" the undergraduates. The 
twenty, I learnt, had grown by rumour out of five. These five 
had been kept out of sight, but when neither Sophomores nor 
Freshmen would disperse on the repeated summons of the 
Proctor who had the charge of order that night, they were 
called out and were ordered to make some arrests. Two stu- 
dents were taken to the Police Station, followed by a great 
crowd. The prisoners, as so often happens in such a case, 
proved to be very quiet youths and were soon set free. The 
police had perhaps shown some of that wisdom which Dog- 
berry enjoins, and had only seized those who would stand when 
they were bidden. 

The regulations about dress last century, though somewhat 
minute, were far less troublesome and absurd than those which 
were enforced at Oxford. There was none of that elaborate 
dressing of the hair which, in each college, kept the junior 
members in a constraint almost as ignoble as if they had been 
set in the stocks. They had to pass under the College barber's 
hands at least two hours before the early dinner — the Seniors 
coming last. When once they had been pomatomed and pow- 
dered exercise was impossible. " A man might be a drunkard, 
a debauchee, and yet long escape the Proctor's animadver- 
sion : but no virtue could protect you if you walked on Christ 



IV. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 65 

Church meadow or on the High Street with a band tied too low, 
or with no band at all ; with a pig-tail, or with a green or scarlet 
coat."^ In 1786, five years after this description of Oxford 
life was written, the Governing Boards of Harvard prescribed 
a uniform. What the colour and form should be was minutely 
set forth. Classes were to be distinguished by frogs on the 
cuffs and buttonholes. Silk was prohibited and home manu- 
factures were recommended.^ Full forty years later these rules 
were to some extent enforced. "In 1824 undergraduates were 
required to wear a uniform consisting entirely of black cloth 
and a black or white cravat. The coat had an ornament 
worked on the cuff of the sleeve in black silk braid which 
was called a ' crow's foot.' A Sophomore wore one of these 
badges, a Junior two, and a Senior three." ^ In 1829 the 
waistcoat had to be of " black-mixed or black ; or, when of 
cotton or linen fabric, of white." Sumner, who, in spite of 
admonition, persisted in wearing one of buff-colour, " was sum- 
moned several times to appear before the Parietal Board ^ for 
disobedience ; but to no purpose. Wearied with the contro- 
versy the Board at length yielded. There is a memorandum 
on his College bill for the first term of his junior year — ^ Ad- 
monition for illegal dress.' " ^ It was perhaps in commemora- 
tion of his triumph over authority that, seventeen years later, 
when he deHvered his famous oration before the Harvard 
Phi Beta Society, he appeared in a buff waistcoat. 

1 Boswell's Life of fohnsoji, III, 13, ii. 4. 

^ Quincy's LLarvard, II. 277. 

3 Life ofB. R. Curtis, 1879, I. 23. 

* "The Proctors, and the officers of instruction who reside in the Uni- 
versity building, or in buildings to which the superintendence of the Uni- 
versity extends, constitute the Parietal Board." — Catalogue, p. 32. 

^ Life of Charles Sumner, I. 52. 
F 



66 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

In Harvard down to the present time there has been little 
of that pleasant friendly intercourse between tutor and under- 
graduate which so commonly exists at Oxford. Much as our 
two great universities suffer as places of learning and even of 
instruction from the college system, for most of the purposes 
of social life they are admirably adapted. The unmarried 
Fellows living in College, commonly on the same staircases as 
the undergraduates, are not the strangers to them that the 
Professors are in Harvard. Even the married Fellows and 
tutors often retain a set of rooms where they can receive their 
guests. They have the use also of the Common Room for all 
purposes of hospitahty. The College kitchen is at their service 
as well as the College cook and the ancient College plate. 
The Oxford breakfast-parties used to be proverbial for their 
pleasantness, though in these busier days they are giving way 
to luncheons. At such gatherings in a Fellow's rooms I have 
in late years often met with great pleasure half a dozen under- 
graduates, and in their bright looks recalled " the happy morn- 
ing of life and of May," when all the world lay at our feet. 
The friendliness of the relations between tutor and under- 
graduate has greatly increased of late years. In my time we 
scarcely came across our tutors save in the Lecture Room. 
On Degree Days, however, the Dean gave a formal breakfast 
to all who were taking their degree, and to a few undergradu- 
ates besides. The meal was abundant and good. For that 
brief hour our host dropped the don as far as he could, and 
assumed somewhat of the air of a man of the world. He 
addressed us with friendly familiarity. ''Jones, may I send 
you some of this chicken? Smith, will you help yourself to 
some brawn? Oxford, you know, is famous for its brawn." 
If there were any present who were taking the Master's degree, 



IV. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 67 

the party broke up in time for them to read aloud the Thirty- 
nine Articles of the Church in the presence of the Dean, and 
to signify their assent and consent to them. Unless this were 
done the degree could not be conferred. I remember how a 
friend of mine, now a learned Canon^ arrived so late at the 
breakfast that there was scarcely time for him to read the 
Articles, and none to swallow a single mouthful. The good- 
natured Dean bade him begin to read as hard as he could and 
go on till his breath failed him, when he himself would take qp 
the wondrous tale, to be relieved in his turn. In this way, 
riding and tying as it were, they scampered through the whole 
Thirty-nine Articles just in time. When two hours after break- 
fast we returned to the same room and to the same table, 
though alas ! very differently spread, for it was covered with 
books, the change was chilling. '■' Mr. Smith, you were not 
at my lecture yesterday." " Mr. Jones, I hardly think your 
rendering of that passage would satisfy the examiners." The 
Master of the College now and then invited a few favoured 
youths to breakfast or dinner. I remember how the great 
man, as some sparkling perry was poured out, impressively 
told us that her Majesty's judges, whom as Vice-Chancellor he 
had lately entertained, preferred it to champagne. He was a 
Canon of Gloucester as well as Master of Pembroke, and in 
the great orchard country had learnt the excellence of perry. 
The very best, such as we were drinking, cost him but two 
shillings a bottle, whereas for his champagne he paid ten. I 
sincerely hope, out of regard to the character of a man who 
from a Canon became a Dean, and from a Dean a Bishop, that 
he did not exaggerate his wine-merchant's prices. He cer- 
tainly told us that the judges' preference of his perry saved 
him eight shillings a bottle. 



68 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Far more formal were the dinners given in those days by the 
Provost of Oriel. It was not till the morning of the solemn 
day that he issued his invitations. All were expected to attend, 
whatever may have been their engagements. His invitations 
were of the nature of the Queen's — they were veiled com- 
mands. The Junior Fellow, who received no longer notice 
than the undergraduates, took the bottom of the table. When 
the cloth was cleared away and the dessert set out, the Provost 
solemnly addressed him. "Mr. Robinson, may I have the 
pleasure of taking a glass of wine with you, and Mr. Brown 
[turning to the undergraduate on his right] will you join?" 
After a pause he challenged in hke manner the guest on his 
left, joining with him the second on his right. In this manner 
he slowly and solemnly travelled down both sides of the table. 
In the drawing-room no undergraduate might sit down in his 
awful presence. One evening a young sprig of the nobility 
was daring enough to take a chair. The Provost at once came 
up as if to engage him in conversation, whereupon the youth 
rose. A man-servant, who had been well-trained in his duty, 
straightway removed the chair. 

This kind of formally is a thing of the past in Oxford. 
Some few traces of it may still linger, but for the most part 
between old and young there is familiarity and friendliness. 
In one of the Colleges, on a Sunday evening, I have now and" 
then attended a large Literary Society, held sometimes in a 
tutor's rooms, sometimes in an undergraduate's, where over 
tea, coffee, and tobacco all meet on friendly terms with no 
inequality but such as naturally comes from greater age and 
greater knowledge. How unlike this free and familiar life is 
to the restrained and distant relations which, too commonly 
though not always, exist at Harvard between teachers and 



IV. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 69 

Students is shown by a passage in an article in the Harvard 
Monthly} Last September, at the beginning of the academic 
year, the President and the Professors for the first time gave a 
kind of reception to the Freshmen. 

"The manner in which the Class of '97^ was received this 
year [writes the editor] showed very plainly the existence of 
a new policy in the conduct of the University. Heretofore a 
Freshman entered college with almost no idea of his responsi- 
bihties, or, indeed, of his advantages. He did not come into 
contact with the Faculty, unless, perhaps, it was in consultation 
with the Dean on some matters of entrance examinations. He 
had no knowledge of those who directed the academic hfe of 
his surroundings. The Faculty was something to be avoided 
as disagreeable and, in most ways, useless. He knew nothing 
of the eminent scholars from whom he might derive benefit, 
since his instructors -were simply his taskmasters, who, after all, 
could do but little if his daily tale of bricks was found incom- 
plete. Thus he was shut off from one side of undergraduate 
life. Perhaps it was years before he saw his one-sidedness ; 
possibly he went on during his entire college career with an 
idea that courses were bad because they emanated from a 
Faculty which he had never known except as his stern, and 
hence disagreeable, censors. All this has of late undergone a 
radical change. The schoolboy who became a member of 
Harvard College last month had the privilege of meeting his 
governors on grounds of social freedom which have been here- 
tofore unknown. His duties and opportunities were clearly 
set before him by representative men, scholars, and athletes ; 

1 October, 1893, P- 37- 

2 The Freshmen of 1893 ^^^^ known as the class of 1897, because it is 
in that year that they will graduate. 



70 HARVARD COLLEGE. 



CHAP. 



he was formally welcomed by the President, and started upon 
his college career with the feeling that the Faculty of Arts and 
Sciences was composed of most delightful men, neither so stern 
nor so stupid as he had expected. Authority must be seen to 
be respected. An emperor that absents himself from his peo- 
ple's sight will find but little loyalty among his subjects when 
he may be pleased to show himself. In former years the 
Faculty have held more or less aloof from a visible participa- 
tion in college interests, and the respect for their authority 
has declined in proportion as they have. so acted. Fortunately, 
however, we seem to have just witnessed the beginning of a 
new policy, which will doubtless tend to weld more closely 
together the various parts of our University." I am told that 
there is a good deal of exaggeration in this account, and that 
not a few of the Professors are on terms of friendly social inter- 
course with many of their pupils. 

Professor Peabody, writing of Harvard as he first knew it sixty 
years ago, says : " Though no student dared to go to a tutor's 
room by daylight, it was no uncommon thing for one to come 
furtively in the evening to ask his teacher's aid in some diffi- 
cult problem or demonstration. The students certainly con- 
sidered the Faculty as their natural enemies. There existed 
between the two parties very little of kindly intercourse, and 
that little generally secret. It was regarded as a high crime 
by his class for a student to enter a recitation-room [lecture- 
room] before the ringing of the bell, or to remain to ask a 
question of the instructor ; even one who was uniformly first in 
the class-room would have had his way to Coventry made easy. 
The Professors performed police duty as occasion seemed to 
demand." ^ For a youth to be intimate with the tutors in 

^ LLai'va'-d Reminiscences, pp. 183, 200. 



IV. HARVARD COLLEGE. 71 

Judge Story's time ''would have exposed him to the imputa- 
tion of being what in technical language was called a ' fisher- 
man ' — a rank and noxious character in college annals."^ 
That in those days this ill-will existed is not surprising, for the 
discipline of Harvard, in one respect, was more like that of a 
French boarding-school than of a university. "The 'grouping' 
of students used to be a penal offence, two having been a suffi- 
cient number to constitute a group ; while in at least one 
instance an extra-zealous Proctor reported a solitary student 
as evidently waiting to be joined by another, and thus offering 
himself as a nucleus for a group." ^ Even in Vienna, under 
the rule of the Hapsburgs, a group cannot be formed, I believe, 
unless there are five people gathered together. Four may stop 
in the street and talk about the weather, without much risk of 
being meddled with. Professor Peabody describes how in 
1832 he and another tutor "had the chief charge of the police 
in the College Yard. The rooms of the tutors and proctors 
were at that time fully furnished by the College, and dark- 
lanterns were among the essential items of furniture. Bonfires 
had been of frequent occurrence in the Yard. The fires were 
made of wood from the students' own wood-piles. [The bon- 
fires in an Oxford quadrangle are too often made of chairs 
and tables not brought from the rooms of those who make the 
fire.] The chief object of these fires was to bring out the 
posse of parietal officers in chase of the moving groups, that 
scattered when they approached, and dodged the dark-lan- 
tern when the slide was removed. We determined to direct 
our attention to the fire, and not to the students. We pulled 
the ignited sticks apart ; and when the fire was thus arrested 
we conveyed the fuel to our own rooms. After two or three 

^Life of Joseph Story, I. 50. '^ Harvard Reminiscences^ p. 207. 



72 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

experiments, the students grew tired of furnishing kindhng- 
wood to their teachers; and the wonted blaze and* outcry 
ceased for the rest of the year." ^ 

To bridge the distance which even in late years has existed 
between teachers and pupils, between old and )^oung, one re- 
ception at the beginning of the academic year can do but 
little. It is a sign, however, of a better day. I wish some 
generous and wealthy benefactor would rise, some hospitable 
man who knows how much a pleasant meal removes awe and 
gives us " suppler souls," who would provide Harvard with a 
Hall for the Professors, Assistant-Professors, Tutors, and In- 
structors, a noble kitchen, a good cellar, a stock of old wine, 
and half a dozen Common Rooms. Perhaps, large though 
the staff is, one Common Room would suffice at first, till the 
art of using it had been acquired. Two or three of the most 
promising young men might be sent over to Oxford for a year 
to study social life. They would see how even the married 
Professors and tutors share in it, dining at least once a week in 
College. No man thinks himself too old to dine in hall. The 
generous hospitality of the place brings the men of the differ- 
ent colleges together. The stranger too shares in it, and sees 
a side of academic life which is found only in England. He 
dines in a noble hall, adorned by the portraits of former 
students who, in one way or another, had gained distinction in 
the world ; from the chair on which he sits he looks down upon 
the rows of tables filled with men all in the freshness of youth ; 
as all stand up for the Latin grace he notices the picturesque 
gowns, which by their shape mark the different ranks of those 
who wear them. After dinner he is taken to a Common Room 
dark with oaken wainscot — the room perhaps where James 

^ Harvard Reminiscences, p. 170. 



IV. . HARVARD COLLEGE. 73 

the Second's arbitrary court was held, and where Addison, per- 
haps, first learnt to like that wine which shortened his days, 
and enabled him, at the early age of forty-seven, to show his 
step-son " how a Christian can die." If it was in Addison's 
College that our stranger dines, he may have noticed a lad 
perched on a stool in a corner, close behind the President's 
chair. It is a Httle chorister, ready to chant grace if he is 
called on ; in any case to be rewarded with a slice of pudding. 
In my College the signal for grace used to be given by three 
blows struck with one small piece of board on another — three 
blows, no doubt, in honour of the Trinity. The custom has 
been allowed to die out. " I have always noticed," wrote the 
antiquary Hearne, on hearing pan-cake bell on Shrove Tues- 
day ring at eleven o'clock instead of at half-past ten, " that 
when laudable old customs are changed learning decays." 
Happily, in the present case, this observation has not been 
verified. Everywhere in Oxford the stranger finds something 
that is curious — something unhke all that he has ever seen 
before. Such customs cannot be transplanted, they must 
grow. No university can exclaim " Go to ; I will be venera- 
ble." Let Harvard once get two or three Common Rooms 
built, and hospitable customs will begin slowly to form. In 
these rooms the teachers of the University will be able, not 
only to entertain their friends and the chance-comer, but also 
to meet their pupils ^^ sine ulla solemnitate " in friendly gather- 
ings. In Oxford the Common Room is often borrowed by one 
of the Fellows for a private party. How pleasant are the 
breakfasts and lunches that are given ! At one of them I had 
the honour to meet the widow and the son of President Gar- 
field. It is nearly sixty years since Longfellow recorded in 
\{\% Journal : '■'■ Exhibition. Everett presides with dignity, but 



74 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

cannot always lay hold of his collegiate cap in the right place. 
Did not dine with the College ; I have not for a long time, 
and shall not till they have a proper dining-room and service."^ 

The strictness of the discipline, added to the indifferent 
quality of the " Commons," often led to rebellions. The rest- 
less spirit of the age no doubt favoured insubordination ; for of 
the more famous of these outbreaks the earliest took place in 
1768, a few years before the Revolution. When once the 
fashion was established, it was likely to be kept up in time of 
general tranquillity. It went on at least as late as 184 1. In 
1 768, " the tutors' windows were broken with brickbats 
and their lives endangered." Three students were expelled. 
But so weak were both the Corporation and the overseers that 
within a few months their punishment was remitted, mainly, if 
not entirely, because " many who have been great friends and 
benefactors to the Society have condescended to intercede in 
their behalf." The aged President Holyoke, as his last official 
act, entered on the records of both Boards his protest against 
this unworthy conduct.^ 

At the Harvard rebellion of 1768 "the scholars met in a 
body under and about a great tree to which they gave the name 
of the Tree of Liberty." ^ I do not know whether an earlier 
instance can be found of those Trees of Liberty which, in little 
more than twenty years, were to become notorious in France. 
This Harvard tree some years after was either blown down or 
cut down. Another Liberty Tree was soon chosen ; it is still 
standing and plays a great part every Class Day. It has long 
ceased to be revolutionary and is recognized by authority. 

1 Life of LI. IV. Longfellow, II. 37. 

2 Quincy's Harvard, II. Il6. 

^ An Historical Sketch, etc., by W. R. Thayer, p. 51. 



IV. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 75 

Professor E. T. Channing, whose admirable lectures in Eng- 
lish kept his pupils generally free from the extravagances of 
the Edward Everett School, " was not [we are told] graduated 
in course, as he was involved in the famous rebellion of 1807, 
one of the few in which the students seem, on the whole, not 
to have been in the wrong." On this Professor Peabody re- 
marks : '' I object to this statement as not broad enough. 
I am inclined to think that in College Rebellions the students 
were always in the right as to principle, though injudicious in 
their modes of actualizing principle. There was not one of 
those rebellions in which the leaders were not among the fore- 
most in their respective classes, in character no less than in 
scholarship. There were traditional maxims and methods of 
college jurisprudence to which the professional mind had be- 
come hardened, which to unsophisticated youth justly seemed 
at variance with natural right ; and there was no form of collec- 
tive protest that they could make which was not deemed rebel- 
lion in such a sense that they were compelled either to recant 
or to leave college under censure. College rebellions have be- 
come impossible because the rights of the students are now 
fully recognized, their sense of honour held sacred, their protests 
and complaints considered carefully and kindly." ^ 

Channing, if as a rebel he was not allowed to graduate, as 
a man of letters had an honorary degree conferred on him 
twelve years later. In the cases of other men the College 
showed its leniency or its penitence. In 1823, thirty-seven 
students, who had protested against an act of tyrannical disci- 
pline, were refused their degree. Many years later the ordinary 
degree was given them. 

There was one rebellion which Professor Peabody must have 

^ Harvard Rejuiniscences, p. 84. 



76 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. iv. 

witnessed in which the students do not seem to have been in 
the right, even as to principle. Longfellow wrote on July 5, 
1841 : "You have probably seen by the papers that we have 
had a rebellion in College. It lasted, however, only two days. 
All is again quiet and orderly. There was never a more silly 
and boyish outbreak, nor one with less cause. Two students 
have been expelled, and six dismissed from College." ^ 

^Life of H. W. Longfellow, I. 379. " Dismission closes a student's con- 
nection with the University, without necessarily precluding his return." 
— Harva7-d Catalogue, p. 32. 



CHAPTER V. 

Odd Characters. — Changes of Names of Places. — Commencement Day. — 
Lafayette. — Russian Naval Officers. — Oxford Commemoration. — 
The Association of the Alumni. — The Classes. — The After-dinner 
Speeches. 

STORIES are handed down, in Harvard, of presidents and 
professors much as they are in Oxford. I have been told 
that the late Master of Balliol sometimes unconsciously amused 
a party of undergraduates whom he was entertaining at break- 
fast by telling anecdotes of the Master of his early days, which 
among his young guests were current about himself. An old 
Fellow of a college, after he had sat musing for a while, said 
to a friend : " When you and I were young, there were so 
many odd characters about the University. How is it that 
there are none now?" "We are the odd characters," his 
friend replied. I hope that Harvard of the present day can 
boast of its odd characters. It is only a brand-new university, 
just turned fresh out of the hands of a millionaire, that should 
have none. ' That there were some of old in the American 
Cambridge is shown by Professor Peabody in his lively 
Reminiscences. There was Professor Popkin who "was not 
without a nickname which he accepted as a matter of course 
from the students; but hearing it on one occasion from a 
young man of dapper, jaunty, unacademic aspect, he said to a 
friend who was standing with him, 'What right has that man 
to call me Old Pop ? He was never a member of Harvard 

77 



78 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

College.'"^ Longfellow, going one day to the Episcopal 
Church in Cambridge, the church which Washington at- 
tended, saw there, " Popkin, standing hoary-headed, red- 
faced, with a narrow-caped, blue greatcbat, looking very 
much like a beadle, and dragging along his heavy vocables 
considerably in the rear of the rest of the congregation."^ 
Lowell describes his "great silver spectacles of the heroic 
period, such as scarce twelve noses of these degenerate days 
could bear."^ "Imagine," writes Professor Goodwin, "the 
venerable Dr. Popkin stepping calmly out of his door on the 
West Cambridge road, and waving his historic umbrella to 
stop an electric car as it goes whizzing by." * There was also 
Professor Hedge who had written a work on Logic, and, ac- 
cording to popular report, was in the habit of saying to his 
class : " It took me fourteen years, with the assistance of the 
adult members of my family, to write this book; and I am 
sure that you cannot do better than to employ the precise 
words of the learned author." ^ 

President Kirkland, "a jolly little man," as Longfellow 
describes him,^ seems to have been a wit. In his day the 
dogma of "the perseverance of the saints" was hotly dis- 
cussed, the dogma, that is to say, that a man who has once 
been brought to a state of grace can never fall from it. 
" When a country deacon called on the President for advice 
about a quarrel that had sprung up in his church concerning 

^ Llaj'vard Reminiscences^"^. \^. This same story, I am told, is now 
current of William Everett while he was Tutor about twenty years ago. 
His nickname was Piggy. 

-Life of H. W. Longfellow^ II. 132. 

"^Literary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, 1890, 1. 91. 

•* l^he FressHt and L^utti7-e of Llarvard College, p. 6. 

^ lb. p. 38. Life of H. W. Longfello7v, I. 71. 



V. * HARVARD COLLEGE. 79 

this dogma, he replied: 'Here in Boston we have no diffi- 
culty on that score; what troubles us here is the perseverance 
of the sinners.'"^ Lowell, in his Cambridge TJiirty Yea?'s 
Ago,'^ gives a pleasant account of the kindly old fellow. "This 
life was good enough for him, and the next not too good. 
The gentlemanlike pervaded even his prayers. His were not 
the manners of a man of the world, nor of a man of the other 
world either ; but both met in him to balance each other in a 
beautiful equilibrium. Praying, he leaned forward upon the 
pulpit-cushion, as for conversation, and seemed to feel him- 
self (without irreverence) on terms of friendly, but courteous 
familiarity with heaven." He knew well how to deal with 
undergraduates. "Hearing that Porter's flip (which was ex- 
emplary) had too great an attraction for the collegians, he 
resolved to investigate the matter himself. Accordingly, 
entering the old inn one day, he called for a mug of it, and 
having drunk it, said, 'And so, Mr. Porter, the young gentle- 
men come to drink your flip, do they?' 'Yes, sir, — some- 
times.' 'Ah, well, I should think they would. Good day, 
Mr. Porter,' and departed saying nothing more; for he always 
wisely allowed for the existence of a certain amount of human 
nature in ingenuous youth. At another time the ' Harvard 
Washington [Corps] ' asked leave to go into Boston to a col- 
lation which had been offered them. ' Certainly, young gen- 
tlemen, ' said the President, ' but have you engaged any one 
to bring home your muskets ? ' — the College being responsi- 
ble for these weapons, which belonged to the State." 

Prescottj writing to his father about his matriculation ex- 
amination, lets us see what a kindly man Kirkland was. 

^ Harvaj-d Reminiscences, p. 71. 

2 Litei'ary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, 1890, I. 83. 



80 HARVARD COLLEGE. ch.ip. 

" When we were first ushered into the presence of the Presi- 
dent and Professors, they looked like so many judges of the 
Inquisition. We were ordered down into the parlour, almost 
frightened out of our wits, to be examined by each separately; 
but we soon found them quite a pleasant sort of chaps. The 
President sent us down a good dish of pears, and treated us 
very much like gentlemen. Professor Ware examined us in 
Grotius lie veritate. We found him very good-natured, for I 
happened to ask him a question in theology, which made him 
laugh so that he was obliged to cover his face with his hands." ^ 
The good dish of pears must have been a pleasant break to a 
long day. Professor Peabody, who entered Har\'ard twelve 
years later, says that the entrance examination "began at six 
in the morning, and, with a half-hour's intermission for din- 
ner, lasted till sunset. Each of thirteen College officers took 
a section, and passed it over to the next, and so on, until it 
had gone the entire round." ^ 

Kirkland's memory is preserved in Cambridge by one of 
those changes which are always to be regretted. " I am come 
to anchor in Professors' Row,"^ wrote Lowell. It is in vain 
that the literary pilgrim looks for Professors' Row. This 
pleasant road has long been known as Kirkland Street. It is 
not a street according to our use of the word. In America, 
country roads, though every house along them stands alone in 
its own grounds, are known as streets. To call them roads, 
as is now sometimes done, is looked upon as an affected 
imitation of the English. If any change has to be made 
avenue is the word. Even Longfellow wanted to give a new 
name to the pleasant road in which he lived. In his Journal 

1 Life of IF. H. Prescott, p. 13. ^ Harvard Reminiscences, p. 93. 

^ Letters 0/ y. R. Lowell, I. 300. 



V. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 81 

he records : " Wrote a petition to have the name of our street 
changed from Brattle to Vassall."^ The fine old mansion in 
which the poet passed the greater part of his life had been 
built by a stubborn Tory, Colonel John Vassall, who, when the 
Revolution broke out, went to England, and erased from his 
coat-of-arms the motto, Semper pro Republic a scEpe pro rege^ 
Had the change been made more would have been lost than 
gained, for the old name of the street awakens ancient memo- 
ries. "All old Cambridge people," writes Dr. Holmes, 
"know the Brattle House, with its gambrel roof, its tall trees, 
its perennial spring, its legendary fame of good fare and hos- 
pitable board in the days of the kindly old bon vivant, Major 
Brattle. In this house. Motley lived during a part of his 
College course."^ Still more ancient memories hang round 
the name. There was a Thomas Brattle who graduated at 
Harvard in 1676, and by his will left "half a crown to every 
student belonging to the College who should attend his 
funeral." He did not share in the Puritans' hatred of instru- 
mental music in churches; for he bequeathed his organ to the 
church in Brattle Street, " if it should procure a sober person 
that can play skilfully thereon with a loud noise." If the gift 
on this condition were refused, then it was to go to the 
Church of England in Boston, and if it were again refused, 
it was to be offered to Harvard.^ "We change our names," 
wrote Lowell, " as readily as thieves, to the great detriment 
of all historical association." ^ 

Of President Quincy, who laboured so hard to uphold the 
discipline of the College, Professor Peabody writes: "He 

1 Life ofH. IV. Longfellozv, II. 94- '^Lb.\. 259. 

3 J. L. Motley, by O. W. Holmes, p. 13. * Quincy's LLarvard, I. 41 1. 
^Literary Essays, 1890, I. 54. 
G 



82 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

seldom remembered a face, and when a student — even one 
sent for but a few minutes before — entered his study, he was 
encountered by the question, 'What's your name? ' So much 
was this his habit, that if it so happened in a rare instance 
that he did recognize a countenance, he was more likely than 
not to say, 'Well, Brown, what's your name?'"^ Early in 
1 86 1, the old gentleman who, yielding to age, had resigned 
his office sixteen years earlier, in defiance of the severity of 
a New England spring, and of the eighty-nine winters which 
he had borne, was a guest of the famous Saturday Club of 
Boston — the Club of Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Agassiz, 
Lowell, Motley, Sumner, Dana, and Holmes, the Club of 
which Lowell wrote from London, at the very time that he 
was the American Minister to England : " I have never seen 
society, on the whole, so good as I used to meet at our Satur- 
day Club." ^ Of this dinner in 1861 Longfellow recorded in 
his Journal : "At the Club old President Quincy was our guest, 
and was very pleasant and wise."^ He lived three years 
longer. When he died Sumner, who in his undergraduate 
days had been under him at Harvard, wrote of him : " Few 
lives have been so completely filled and rounded as his, always 
industrious, faithful, true, and noble. "^ 

That New England was settled by men trained in a univer- 
sity, and not by a set of eager, pushing adventurers, is shown 
both by the early foundation of Harvard College, and also by 
the solemnity with which from the beginning Commencement 
was kept. Only thirteen years after Boston was settled, and 
twenty-two years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at 
Plymouth, the long series of these annual celebrations began 

^ Harvard Remitiisceitces, p. t,?)- ^ Letters of J. R. Lozvelly II. 307. 

8 LAfe of H. W. Longfellozu, 11. 361. * Life of Charles Sumner, IV. 202. 



V. * HARVARD COLLEGE. 83 

in the American Cambridge, which, broken only by war and 
pestilence, still runs on, and is likely to run on "till the 
stock of the Puritans die." 

Labitur ei labetur in otnne vobibilis cevum. 

Before the close of the seventeenth century the day was kept 
in all the country round as the great holiday of the Puritan 
Commonwealth. What was sourly refused to Christmas was 
willingly granted to Commencement. Every one streamed 
out of Boston across the Charles River or up it in boats. The 
Governor, escorted by his body-guard, came in state. On 
the Common in front of the College, a fair was held. The 
festivities of the day before long turned to license. Feasts 
were given by the graduating students in rooms, where "dis- 
tilled lyquours" were drunk. The use of strong drink was 
sometimes forbidden by the Governing Bodies, though for- 
bidden in vain. Sometimes it was tolerated. One easy- 
going Board, who, perhaps through the unwonted strength of 
their heads, had made the great discovery " that punch, as it 
is now usually made, is no intoxicating liquor," allowed the 
students "to entertain one another and strangers with it, "pro- 
vided it was done "in a sober manner." In the use of 
"plumb-cake" the excesses were so great that so early as 
1693 the Corporation passed a vote that, "having been in- 
formed that the custom taken up in the College, not used in 
any other universities, for the commencers [members of the 
graduating class] to have plumb-cake, is dishonourable to the 
College, not grateful to wise men, and chargeable to the pa- 
rents of the commencers [the Corporation], do therefore put 
an end to that custom, and do hereby order that no com- 
mencer, or other scholar, shall have any such cakes in their 



84 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Studies or chambers; and that if any scholar shall offend 
therein, the cakes shall be taken from him, and he shall more- 
over pay to the College twenty shillings for each such 
offence." 

By 1722 a second ordinance was needed; for, so far from 
"the plumb-cake" having been given up, to it had been 
added "roasted, boyled, baked meats and pyes." Some art- 
ful youths "went about to evade the Act by plain cake." A 
third ordinance was passed five years later, which refused any 
who should henceforth so transgress their degree.-^ 

The disorders both inside and outside the College grew to 
such a head, that an attempt was made to put a check on 
them by keeping secret the day on which Commencement 
should be held. The general outcry was, however, too strong 
for the Corporation to resist, and the old arrangement was 
soon resumed. Even the very pulpits must have sounded 
against them, for, according to Lowell, " the one great holi- 
day of the clergy of Massachusetts was Commencement, which 
they punctually attended."^ "In 1749 three gentlemen who 
had sons about to be graduated, offered to give the College a 
thousand pounds^ provided 'a trial was made of Commence- 
ments this year in a more private manner.' " The Corpora- 
tion, mindful of the lack of funds, were for acquiescing, 
but the Overseers would consent to no breach in the old 
custom. * 

1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 386 ; 11. 95 ; An Historical Sketch, p. 54. 

2 Harvard University, 2^oth Anniversary, 1887, p. 211. 

^ "The currency of account in New England, subsequent to 1652, was 
termed laii'ful money. It was one-quarter less in value than English cur- 
rency of account." Quincy's Harvard, II. 231. One thousand pounds 
was therefore equal to seven hundred and fifty pounds of English money. 

4 lb. I. 396 ; II. 92. 



V. , HARVARD COLLEGE. 85 

During the War of the Revolution, Commencement was not 
kept; but when the celebrations were resumed they became 
more popular than ever. In Boston even the Custom House 
and the banks were closed on the great day. Professor Pea- 
body, describing the College as it was when he entered it 
seventy years ago, says : " The entire Common, then an unen- 
closed dust-plain, was completely covered on Commencement 
Day, and the night preceding and following it, with drinking- 
stands, dancing-booths, mountebank shows, and gambling- 
tables ; and I have never heard such a horrid din, tumult, and 
jargon of oath, shout, scream, fiddle, quarrelling, and drunk- 
enness as on those two nights. By such summary methods as 
but few other men could have employed, Mr. Quincy, at the 
outset of his presidency [1829], swept the Common clear; 
and during his entire administration the public days of the 
College were kept free from rowdyism."^ That Harvard "in 
its birth and purpose was a religious institution," strangely 
enough added to the disorder. "Pious citizens of Boston 
used to send their slaves to Commencement for their religious 
instruction and edification. But the negroes soon found that 
they could spend their holidays more to their satisfaction, if 
not more to the good of their souls, on the outside than in 
the interior of the meeting-house. At length Commencement 
came to be the great gala-day of the year for the coloured 
people in and about Boston, who were, by no means, such 
quiet and orderly citizens as their representatives now are, 
while their comparative number was much greater." ^ It was 
as if in Oxford, Commemoration and St. Giles Fair — one of 
the last left us of the great English fairs — were held on the 
same day. 

1 ILarvard Reminiscences.^ p. 59. ^ lb. p. 26, 



86 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Close to the Common where this scene of riot was going 
on, and facing the College gates, stands the First Parish 
Church, parted by its graveyard alone from the Episcopa- 
lian Church where Washington had his pew. 

" Like sentinel and nun they keep 
Their vigil on the green : 
One seems to guard and one to weep 
The dead that lie between." 

In this old church, for a century and a half, the Commence- 
ment exercises were held and the degrees were conferred. 
From the College a procession was formed, which is thus de- 
scribed as it was seen in 1725: "The Bachelors of Arts 
walked first, two in a rank, and then the Masters, all bare- 
headed; then followed Mr. Wadsworth alone as President; 
next the Corporation and Tutors, two in a rank; then the 
Honourable Lieutenant-Governor and Council, and next to 
them the rest of the gentlemen."^ The President sat in the 
old chair sung of by the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table : — 

" One of the oddest of human things, 
Turned all over with knobs and rings, 
But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand, 
Fit for the worthies of the land." 

The exercises were all in Latin. According to the ancient 
fashion of universities, there was a "syllogistic disquisition. 
When the disputations were going on the President had often 
occasion to interpose and set the disputants right. This was 
always done in Latin. "^ It was not till after the middle of 
the eighteenth century that "the walls" of the church "were 
disgraced " by being made to echo English.^ 

1 Quincy's Harvard, I. 377. - Higher EducatioUy etc., p. 36. 

^ " Dr. Johnson said that he would never consent to disgrace the walls 
of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription." Bosweirs Life of 
Johnson, III. 85. 




D 
O 
X 

X 
H 

O 

Q 

< 

n: 



V. - HARVARD COLLEGE. 87 

In the year 1824 Harvard, in common with the rest of the 
country, went wild with excitement over General Lafayette, 
who had crossed the sea as "the Guest of the Nation." The 
triumphant progress of "Grandison-Cromwell," the most 
conspicuous and the most fatal failure of the French Revolu- 
tion, astonishes an Englishman who knows nothing of the 
services rendered nearly fifty years earlier by the gallant 
young Frenchman to the struggling Colonies. When Edward 
Everett, in his oration at the Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Har- 
vard, writes one who was present, spoke of "the noble con- 
duct of our guest in procuring a ship for his own transporta- 
tion, at a time when all America was too poor to offer him a 
passage to her shores, the scene was overpowering; every one 
was in tears. "^ At every town, at every crossway, crowds 
had been waiting to welcome Lafayette as he passed onwards 
from New York to Boston. Men pressed forward to shake his 
hand, and babies were held up for him to kiss, so that if they 
lived to be old men and women, they might boast that this 
demigod had touched them with his lips. "If Lafayette had 
kissed me," said an enthusiastic lady, "depend upon it, I 
would never have washed my face again as long as I lived ! " '^ 
Webster, addressing him on Bunker Hill, exclaimed: "For- 
tunate, fortunate man! With what measure of devotion will 
you not thank God for the circumstances of your extraordinary 
life! You are connected with both hemispheres, and with 
two generations. Heaven saw fit to ordain that the electric 
spark of liberty should be conducted through you from the 
New World to the Old."^ It was perhaps the throng of 
worshippers, the hand-shakings, and the baby-kissings, that 



1 J. Quincy's Ingiires of the Past, p. 107. 
lb- p. 153- '^ Webster's Works, I. 70. 



88 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

on Commencement Day made the great man and his escort 
reach the College nearly two hours behind time. At the en- 
trance, as an eye-witness records/ "he was welcomed by 
President Kirkland in a neat and peculiarly appropriate ad- 
dress." A neat address to welcome the hero of two worlds! 
Nothing but a neat address ! Perhaps, however, to be merely 
neat was the best thing "a jolly little man" could do who 
knew that there was an Edward Everett with his never- 
failing eaglet to follow. Josiah Quincy, to whom had been 
assigned the honour of the Latin "Valedictory," — the speech 
in which the newly-made Bachelor in the name of his com- 
rades bids Alma Mater farewell, — has left an account of the 
day. "The first part of my performance," he writes, "con- 
sisted of mere phrases of rhetorical compliment, thrown out 
at creation in general. But the inevitable allusion came at 
last. I had drifted among the heroes of the Revolution, and 
suddenly turned to the General with my In ie quoque^ Lafay- 
ette — and then what an uproar drowned the rest of the sen- 
tence ! The entire audience upon the floor had sprung to 
their feet, the ladies in the gallery were standing also, and 
were waving their handkerchiefs with impassioned ardour. 
It was the last opportunity which the day was to offer to pay 
homage to the guest of America, and, as if by one consent, 
it was improved to the utmost."^ 

Such scenes of triumph Lafayette had not witnessed since 
that memorable Festival of the Federation on the Champ de 
Mars, when, mounted on his white charger, " il semblait com- 
mander a la France entiere." A wit, pointing him out to a 

1 The Rev, John Pierce, quoted in W. R. Thayer's Historical Sketch of 
Harvard University, p. 55. 

2 J. Quincy's Figures of the Past, pp. 55-57. 



V. HARVARD COLLEGE. 89 

young man who was standing near him, exclaimed: "Voyez- 
vous M. de La Fayette qui galope dans les siecles a venir! " '^ 
Through America in the nineteenth century he was having the 
first of these gallops. 

The excesses from the too free use of wine and punch at 
the Commencement dinners began more than fifty years 
ago to move the friends of temperance. The Rev. John 
Pierce, one of those useful divines who keep a minute 
diary, recorded in 1836: "Be it noted that this is the first 
Commencement I ever attended in Cambridge in which I saw 
not a single person drunk in the Hall or out of it." Perhaps 
this most irregular regularity of conduct may be accounted for 
by the next line in the Diary : "There were the fewest pres- 
ent I ever remember." Two years later he makes the follow- 
ing entry: "Notwithstanding the efforts of the friends of 
temperance, wine was furnished at dinner."^ But a more 
sober day was dawning. In 1846 Professor Silliman of Yale, 
who was one of the guests, recorded: "There was no wine — 
only lemonade; the very first instance of the kind that has 
occurred here." ^ 

What a change had come over the University since those 
early days when two undergraduates paid part of their term's 
charges with a rundlet of sack, and a Bachelor of Arts was 
"credited with £^\ %s. od. for 'sack that he brought into Col- 
lege at Commencement, and was charged upon the rest of 
the Commencement according to their proportion.' " ^ What 
sound morality the old Puritans could draw even out of strong 

^ Alemoires die General Baron Thiebault, p. 261, 

2 Quoted in W. R. Thayer's Historical Sketch, etc., p. 56. 

^ Life of Benjamin Silliman, II. 32. 

* The Early College Buildings at Cambridge, by A. M. Davis, 1890, p. 12. 



90 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

waters, is shown by the following passage in the Diary of 
Samuel Sewall, who was Chief Justice of the Commonwealth 
and an Overseer of Harvard College. "Sixth-day. Oct. i, 
1697. Had first Butter, Honey, Curds and Cream. For 
Diner, very good Rost Lamb, Turkey, Fowls, Aplepy. 
After Diner sung the 121 Psalm. Note. A glass of spirits 
my wife sent stood upon a Joint-Stool which Simon W. jog- 
ging, it fell down and broke all to shivers. I said 'twas a 
lively emblem of our Fragility and Mortality." ^ It was not, 
we may feel sure, the first glass that had been brought in that 
day. More than one must have gone to the making of so 
pious a reflection. 

It is not easy to conceive the still deeper shade of melan- 
choly which stole over the great Webster's naturally sad face 
— for he also was a guest at the Commencement dinner re- 
corded by Professor Silliman — as he contemplated the lem- 
onade bottle, and thought of the old Madeira in the cellar of 
his pleasant home at Marshfield. " Dost thou think because 
thou art virtuous," he might have cried out to the Rev. John 
Pierce, "there shall be no more cakes and ale?" He was 
no Dr. Johnson whose face about five o'clock one morning, 
towards the end of a supper-party, "shone with meridian 
splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade." A 
lady at whose house I stayed told me that her father had been 
a great admirer of Webster. One day he rode fifty miles to 
hear him speak, but to his grief found that his hero was too 
far gone in drink to be able to utter a word. 

Since 1846 no liquor stronger than coffee has been provided. 
The thousand graduates, who every year at this great gathering 
dine together in Memorial Hall, must pledge one another in 

1 Diary of Samuel Sewall, I. 460. 



V. HARVARD COLLEGE. 91 

lemonade, iced water, or coffee. At the dinner last summer 
I sat opposite a foreign professor on whom an honorary de- 
gree had been conferred. I was struck by "the dejected 
'haviour of his visage." It might have been due to the 
speeches, but I would fain hope that it was only caused by 
enforced temperance. I called to mind how, a year or two 
earlier, a French Academician, on a visit to Oxford, had burst 
into the house of one of my friends, and in a parched voice 
had begged for a glass of wine. Some was given him. As 
soon as he was sufficiently recovered to speak, he explained 
that he had been dining with a great scholar but a rigid teeto- 
taler. It was, he said, the first time within his memory that 
he had taken his dinner without wine or beer, and he felt 
well-nigh suffocated. At the Harvard Commencement, the 
victory of the friends of temperance is not even yet complete. 
As night draws on there are still occasionally some remnants 
of drunkenness to be seen. To each class — to the graduates, 
that is to say, of each year — a room is assigned in the Col- 
lege buildings, where old friends can meet. It sometimes 
happens that a wealthy toper, in defiance of the wishes and 
even of the votes of the abstainers who often form a majority, 
insists on ]5roviding a mighty bowl of punch. I was surprised 
to learn that no greatly aggrieved teetotaler had ever been 
known, in his righteous indignation, to throw into the mixture 
a handful of salt. The Americans, however, are a patient 
people. Harvard punch-bowls, nevertheless, have had their 
day, and may now be stowed away in the Archaeological 
Museum. The President and Fellows have this year voted, 
that "hereafter no punches nor distilled liquors shall be 
allowed in any College room on Class Day or Commencement 
Day." 



92 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

When I considered the academic temperance of the place, 
the impossibility of getting wine or beer in the great Hall 
of the University, I was astonished at the daring imagination 
of the Professor of Latin, who, when a great German scholar 
was celebrating last year the fiftieth anniversary of his doc- 
torate, assured him in a telegram : — 

" Harvardiani festo gratantes die 
Salutem plenis tibi propinant poculis." 

What do the Harvardiani know of full cups — the learned 
Harvardiani I mean, not the dull topers who each Commence- 
ment flock in from the country? But the Professor has the 
poet's mind: — 

" And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

For the great ceremony of Commencement, we assembled 
in Massachusetts Hall, the oldest building in Harvard. I 
was first taken by a friend to the gateway to watch the arrival 
of His Excellency the Governor of the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts. Alone among the Governors of the forty-two 
States does he bear this title of Excellency. He drove up 
in an open carriage drawn by four horses, himself in plain 
clothes, but accompanied by a Staff, in their scarlet uniforms 
more splendid even than the Deputy-Lieutenants of the city 
of London. A troop of Lancers — citizens playing at sol- 
diers — escorted him. His train was swelled by the chief 
ofificers of two Russian men-of-war. It so happened that on 
a point overlooking Boston Harbour the statue of Admiral 
Farragut, the naval hero of the war between the North and 
South, was next day to be unveiled. The Czar, once more 



V. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 93 

eager to exhibit his Platonic love of republics and liberty, had 
sent his ships to add to the display. The Lancers halted 
outside the gates, but the Staff accompanied the Governor as 
he drove in. One of these gorgeous citizens, anxious for the 
honour of Boston and Harvard, and unwilling that it should 
be thought that all this state was a mere passing compliment 
to the foreign naval officers, assured them that every year 
there was the same pomp. As they entered the College 
grounds there was indeed an unwonted sight for the subjects 
of a despot,^ a great crowd and not a single soldier or police- 
man in sight. As, led by a brass band, we slowly marched 
in a long procession through the Yard and across the public 
road beyond to Memorial Hall, the throng of undergraduates 
and strangers opened of itself to let us pass, lining both sides 
of the way. At certain points, where there was any "coign 
of vantage " they gathered together and cheered the popular 
men as they went by. The Governor seemed a great favour- 
ite. Just before me in the long line was the Rev. Dr. Everett 
Hale. As we passed the thronged steps of University Hall, 
a young man standing at the foot, and looking up to the 
undergraduates massed above him, cried out "Hale!" and 
beat time for the "Harvard yell," as they all shouted: Rah- 
rah- rah ; rah-rah-rah ; rah-rah-rahl — Hale, or rather, 
Ha-al, for they prolonged the note. Dr. Hale lifted his hat 
in acknowledgment. Just beyond, an absurdly drunken fel- 
low bestowed on me as deep and as formal a bow as his un- 
steady legs allowed. He meant well no doubt, and it was a 
flattering attention to a stranger; but I did not think it need- 
ful to reply to the compliment. As we drew near Sanders 
Theatre — the Harvard Sheldonian — we passed between the 
graduating Bachelors who, in cap and gown, lined both sides 



94 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

of the way. They fell in at the end of the procession. In 
the theatre they occupied the area, and, far better off than the 
Oxford Masters of Arts to whom the same place is assigned 
in the Sheldonian, they were provided with benches. 

I was greatly struck by the difference between a Harvard 
Commencement and an Oxford Commemoration. In both 
prize compositions are recited, and in both honorary degrees 
are conferred. But here the resemblance ceases. At Har- 
vard the ordinary degrees are also given, the degrees for the 
whole year. In Oxford, it is the distinguished strangers 
alone who on the great day are honoured. Even an Oxonian 
Bishop, who in that capacity is at once made a Doctor of 
Divinity, is not thought good enough, or at all events great 
enough, for Commemoration. In Oxford, far greater pomp is 
aimed at, but owing to the unrestrained folly of the under- 
graduates far less is achieved. Few ceremonies have been 
contrived with greater art. To the triumphant notes of the 
organ, the Vice-Chancellor, preceded by the Bedells with 
their silver maces, followed by the Doctors in their scarlet or 
crimson gowns and the two Proctors, enter the Theatre by 
the great doors, which on this day alone are flung open. He 
takes his seat in his chair of state, with the Proctors below 
him and the Doctors on the amphitheatre around him. The 
names of those who are to be honoured that day are one by 
one put to the vote of the House, a nominal vote it is true. 
" Placetne vobis Domini Doctores? placetne vobis, Magistri ? " 
the Vice-Chancellor asks in each case, he and the Proctors as 
the question is put raising their caps, which they alone wear 
during the proceedings. The doors are a second time thrown 
open, and the Bedells lead in a second procession, composed 
of those who are to receive the honorary degrees, each wear- 



V. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 95 

ing the crimson gown of a Doctor of Laws. The Regius 
Professor of Civil Law takes them one by one to the foot of 
the steps which lead up to the Vice-Chancellor's chair, and 
there, in a Latin speech, proclaims each new Doctor's merits. 
Each is welcomed by the Vice-Chancellor with a grasp of the 
hand, and then takes his seat among the other Doctors. At 
my first Commemoration, the Chancellor presided, the Earl 
of Derby, and on Alfred Tennyson, among others, an honorary 
degree was conferred. 

All the solemnity and all the pomp of this ancient and strik- 
ing ceremony disappear beneath the dull buffoonery of the 
undergraduates, and the incredible weakness of the Univer- 
sity. The Regius Professor's voice is drowned by silly out- 
cries, and illustrious strangers are honoured — if honour it 
can be called — in the midst of an insulting din. " Have I 
done anything to offend them? " a learned foreigner not long 
ago anxiously asked, when the speech in which his h'igh merits 
were described was overwhelmed by the uproar. I have seen 
few more piteous sights than one I witnessed many years ago, 
when an aged Vice-Chancellor, repeatedly raising his cap to 
the undergraduates in the gallery, with beseeching looks, for 
his voice could not have been heard, pleaded for silence, but 
pleaded in vain. His humble appeals were answered with 
jeers and roars of laughter. Men who could thus insult vene- 
rable old age should have been hooted out of a university.^ 
How different was the scene at Harvard ! There was no state, 
but there was perfect decorum — a decorum not once marred 
by the slightest impropriety, the slightest touch of rude- 
ness during the whole of the proceedings. Each recipient of 

1 The Commemoration of the present year was conducted with far 
greater decorum than any I have witnessed. 



96 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap, 

an honorary degree rose from his seat as his name was read 
out by the President, who in a few words in Latin sounded 
his praises. They exchanged bows, and the newly-made 
Doctor sat down. Applause followed in each case; the 
louder, of course, the more a man was a popular favourite, 
but in no case was it prolonged. A little more ceremony 
would not have been out of place. 

Of the three hundred and thirty-eight students who took the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts, only a few of the most distin- 
guished were called up to the dais. To them were handed 
by the President bundles of parchment diplomas, which they 
distributed among their comrades seated in the area. Whilst 
this distribution was quietly going on, the other degrees in 
Arts, Divinity, Law, Medicine, and Science were conferred, 
the recipients coming up in batches. As each batch presented 
itself, the President, in Latin addressing the Governing Body, 
stated that the students had been examined and approved 
by the Professors, and like the Vice-Chancellor at Oxford, 
asked for their Placet for conferring the degree. 

The six Bachelors who recited the prize-compositions were 
perfect in their memory; there was not in any one of them 
the slightest hesitation. They had been carefully trained in 
elocution. They spoke slowly and clearly. Their action — 
no doubt the result also of training — was too monotonous. 
There was a movement of the hand so unvaried and mechani- 
cal that it added nothing to the force of the words. Perfect 
rest would have been equally effective. They did not, as at 
Oxford, speak from pulpits. Each, as he stepped upon the 
dais, made a low bow to the President, and then, turning 
round, an equally low bow to the audience. He who spoke 
the Latin oration introduced first the Governor of the Com- 



V. HARVARD COLLEGE. 97 

monwealth, to whom he bowed, and next the President of the 
University. On each successive Governor an honorary degree 
had for so many years been conferred, that it came to be 
regarded as an established custom. When, however, Massa- 
chusetts disgraced herself by the election of the notorious Gen- 
eral Butler, Harvard refused to be dragged through the mire. 
That year the Governor was passed over. 

Inside the Theatre as well as outside, there was something 
in the way of surprise for the Russian ofificers. One of the 
young orators was, beyond all manner of doubt, a Jew by race 
— a Jew, moreover, from the east of Europe. Here he was 
no outcast, but one of the chosen people, one of " the happy 
few " on whom high honour was conferred. Another boldly 
maintained, in defiance of truth, censors, and the Czar of all the 
Russias, that " the eternal and inalienable rights of man are 
asserted everywhere." A third attacked the Government of 
his country. "Out of the present political corruption," he 
said, "good men have given up the field." No such speech 
as that, I thought to myself, is happily ever heard in Eng- 
land. The young orator insisted on their duty to return to 
the strife, and to make political life once more wholesome 
and pure. 

In Oxford, at the close of the ceremony, a lunch is given to 
the newly-made Doctors and to the most important people in 
the University, in the noble Library of All Souls' College. 
With a far less splendid meal, the guests of the day are wel- 
comed at Harvard. The dinner is not under the management 
of the University, but of the Association of Alumni. Judge 
Story, who was its founder, had been shocked by the petty 
jealousies which so often kept men apart who had been bred 
in the same college. He hoped to do something towards 



H 



98 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

bringing them nearer to one another by an association to 
which every Harvard man should be freely admitted. In the 
address which he delivered, in 1842, at the first gathering he 
said: "We meet for peace and for union; to devote one day 
in the year to academical intercourse and the amenities of 
scholars." ^ Every year, on Commencement Day, the Alumni 
elect their President for the next year, whose chief duty it is 
to preside at the annual dinner. This gathering of graduates 
is far beyond anything known in an English university. It is 
not to witness Commencement that most of them come, for 
it is by the friends of the youthful Bachelors and by strangers 
that the Theatre is mainly thronged. The former members 
of the University flock to Harvard from all parts of the coun- 
try, not only to meet their old comrades, in accordance with 
a time-honoured custom, but also to vote at the election of the 
Overseers. Of the eighteen thousand men who have gradu- 
ated in the last two centuries and a half, more than one-half, 
it is believed, are still living. Of these, from one in ten to 
nearly one in seven vote each year.^ As proxies are not 
allowed, the attendance is very large. 

An attempt has recently been made to extend the suffrage, 
which at present is confined to graduates in Arts and the 
holders of honorary degrees. "It was not so much," it is 
said, "the naked right to vote that was sought, as recognition 
at Commencement, and a right to partake of the hospitalities 
of the College, and participate in the enthusiasm of the occa- 
sion."^ It seems strange that to all who have a Harvard 
degree, this recognition should not be freely extended, and 

^ Life of yoseph Story, 11. 426. 

2 Harvard University, by F. BoUes, p. 4; Llarvard Graduates' Maga- 
zine, '^z.nvOiXy, 1893, P- 269. * lb. 



V. HARVARD COLLEGE. 99 

this right should not be willingly granted. The Medical 
School, however, is so loosely connected with the old foun- 
dation, that it can scarcely share in its spirit. Having its 
seat three miles away in Boston, it has no part in the aca- 
demical life and in the social feeling. In Oxford and Cam- 
bridge there is, happily, no similar local separation of the 
students. Whatever may be their studies, they are all, not 
only in name but in reality, members of the same univer- 
sity. They almost all belong to one or other of the colleges. 
To complete their education our young physicians and sur- 
geons must, no doubt, go up to London; for in the small 
hospital of a country town the "many shapes of death" and 
disease cannot be thoroughly studied. It is a pity that in the 
American university all the preliminary scientific instruction, 
all the instruction which can be given outside a hospital, is 
not given at Harvard. It would confer a double benefit — a 
benefit on those who study Medicine and on those who study 
Arts; for the mingling of men and studies is the very essence 
of the training of a university. The graduates of the Law 
School, however, are not under the same disadvantage. To 
them, for three long years, the Yard had been their pacing- 
ground. They "ranged that enclosure old" no less than the 
students in Arts. Nevertheless, I am told that on the hearts 
of those who, before coming to Harvard, had passed through 
some other university, their first Alma Mater generally retains 
by far the stronger hold. It might be otherwise were they 
not only allowed, but even urged, to share in "the enthusi- 
asm of the occasion." Then as the year came round, they 
would help to swell the throng which from North, South, and 
West, from the Canadian borders, from the pleasant shores of 
the far-distant Pacific, and from the wilds of " vast, illimita- 



100 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

ble Texas " gathers in Fair Harvard, " the home of their free- 
roving years." 

When the writer whom I have quoted above talks of " the 
right to partake in the hospitalities of the College," he must 
use the term hospitalities somewhat loosely. It could scarcely 
be expected that the Corporation should each year feed a 
thousand self-invited guests. Each alumnus pays for his own 
dinner. The charge, viewed in the abstract, seems moderate 
enough — only a dollar. As two o'clock, the hour for the 
repast, drew near, we were for the second time that day 
formed in procession in the Yard. At the head came the 
President of the Association and the guests, and next the 
graduates according to their standing. They were summoned 
in their Classes. Classes and the strong Class spirit which 
springs from them, so familiar a feature of American univer- 
sities, are unknown in Oxford and Cambridge. Even at 
Harvard, firmly as this comradeship binds together the older 
men, among the younger generations it is dying out. "There 
is no Class spirit at Harvard," a young writer says sadly; "the 
elective system destroyed that long ago."^ Much of this 
spirit was bad, and has deservedly perished. "The different 
Classes," wrote Judge Story, speaking of his undergraduate 
days, " were almost strangers to each other, and cold reserve 
generally prevailed between them."^ 

Just as in the ancient English universities, when any mem- 
ber of it is mentioned, the question is commonly put, "What 
is his College?" so in an American university it is asked, 
"What is his Class? " The course of instruction spreads over 
four years, and the undergraduates are ranged in four divi- 
sions. Freshmen, Sophomores, Junior Sophisters or Juniors, 

1 The Crimson, June 23, 1893. ^ ^'/^ of Joseph Story, I. 49. 



V. ' HARVARD COLLEGE. 101 

and Senior Sophisters or Seniors. Each of these divisions, 
furthermore, is known as the Class of such a year; not of the 
year in which it begins its studies, but of that in which it is 
to bring them to a close. For instance, at the beginning of 
the academic year in September, 1893, there were in resi- 
dence the Classes of 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897. The Seniors 
form the Class of 1894, for it is in that year that they are to 
graduate. The Juniors form the Class of 1895; the Sopho- 
mores, of 1896; and the Freshmen, of 1897. In the old days, 
the members of each Class, all following the same course of 
instruction under the same tutors, being, moreover, compara- 
tively few in number by the end of their four years, if they had 
not all become intimate, had, at all events, each acquired a 
more or less accurate knowledge of the character of every one 
of his companions. As, in all the anxious timidity of a 
Freshman, they had on the same day entered College, so on 
the same day, in all "the towering confidence " of a Bachelor 
of Arts, had they bidden it farewell. Every year, as Com- 
mencement has come round, have they revived the old inti- 
macy and kept the old bond from loosening. Not only do they 
meet in Harvard, but in Boston also they often have their 
annual dinner. So, too, do many of the colleges of Oxford 
and Cambridge have theirs in London. But in these meet- 
ings of the American university, there is this touching differ- 
ence. Each year the band grows smaller and smaller as 
classmate after classmate passes away. There is no fresh 
swarm of young men to fill up the gaps left by the veterans. 
In the Harvard Graduates' Magazine for January, 1893, 
eight or nine pages are given to News from the Classes. The 
Rev. Samuel May, one of the last survivors of that gallant 
band of which William Lloyd Garrison was the leader, sends 



102 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

\\\ his report as Secretary of the Class of 1829. "There is 
little," he writes, "that a Class of five men, all past the age 
of eighty years, can have to report of doings. Yet, when that 
five includes such names as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Sam- 
uel Francis Smith, it will be admitted that it is not altogether, 
even now, an idle class. The 'national song,' written by 
the latter, has just been sung in union by tens of millions of 
voices and hearts at the national and patriotic commemora- 
tion of the four-hundredth Columbus Anniversary." Dr. S. F. 
Smith is the author also of America^ which sixty-two years 
ago he struck off in half an hour to the tune of God Save the 
King. "I had no idea," he says, "that I was writing a 
national hymn." On the eighty-third birthday of his old 
classmate, Dr. Holmes, he wrote, as Mr. May tells us, to one 
of the Boston newspapers: "We have but one Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes, who is known and loved everywhere in the 
English-speaking world. . . . Sixty-three years out of col- 
lege! The famous Class dinners, uninterrupted in annual 
recurrence from 1828 to 1890, have been discontinued at a 
public hostelry; but Dr. Holmes opens his hospitable doors 
and spreads his table annually for those that remain. Three 
in 1 89 1, three in 1892, met in memory of the past, in recog- 
nition of the present, and in anticipation of the future." The 
Secretary of the Class of 1832 reports that there were only 
four now available for an anniversary. Of the four, one was 
the Autocrat's brother, Mr. John Holmes, "the best and most 
delightful of men," as Lowell many years ago described him.^ 
The strength of this Class feeling is now and then shown in a 
union for some good purpose. Thus, the Class of 1856 raised 
a subscription of six thousand dollars (^1226), as a fund 

1 Letters of J. R. Lozvell, II. 173. 



V. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 103 

for defraying the annual publication of Hai'vard Studies in 
Classical Philology y while the Class of 1857 put up a window 
of painted glass in Memorial Hall.^ 

When on Commencement Day in last June, the procession 
began to form in the Yard, and the Marshal called out, " Class 
1826," there was great cheering as a solitary old man stood 
forth. How much that old man had seen! When he left 
College, there still survived many a gray-headed veteran who 
had fought in the Revolutionary War. The Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table was just closing his Freshman's year. Motley, 
Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Lowell, Dana, and Theodore Parker 
were schoolboys. He was soon supported by a veteran of 
1827. Of the next three years, there was not a single repre- 
sentative. From 1 83 1 downwards there was no gap. In the 
Hall the alumni sat down in their Classes, so that comrade 
sat by comrade. The Rev. Mr. Pierce records of the dinner 
of 1829: "I set the tune, St. Martin'' s, the seventeenth time 
to the LXXVHI Psalm. I asked the President how much of 
the Psalm we should sing. Judge Story replied, 'Sing it all.' 
We accordingly, contrary to custom, sang it through without 
omitting a single stanza. It was remarked that the singing 
was never better. But as the company are in five different 
rooms, it will be desirable on future occasions to station a 
person in each room to receive and communicate the time."^ 
To go through the whole of the seventy-three verses of this 
fine psalm, even though the singers were all in one great hall, 
would be more than these modern days would patiently bear. 
We were contented with singing only five. As I thought of 
the old settlement of the Puritans, and of their noble resolu- 

1 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January, 1893, pp. 279, 322. 

2 Historical Sketch, etc., p. 56. 



104 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

tion that whatever dangers and hardships they themselves had 
to face, their children should not grow up in ignorance; as I 
called to mind that we were standing on the very spot where 
they had founded their College, these verses sung by a thou- 
sand voices of their descendants, removed from them by two 
centuries and a half, seemed to me unspeakably touching : — 

" Give ear, ye children ; to my law 
Devout attention lend; 
Let the instructions of my mouth 
Deep in your hearts descend. 

"My tongue, by inspiration taught, 
Shall parables unfold; 
Dark oracles, but understood, 
And own'd for truths of old : 

" Which we from sacred registers 
Of ancient times have known; 
And our forefathers' pious care 
To us has handed down. 

" Let children learn the mighty deeds 
Which God perform'd of old; 
Which, in our younger years, we saw, 
And which our fathers told. 

" Our lips shall teach them to our sons, 
And they again to theirs; 
That generations yet unborn 
May teach them to their heirs." 

There is a quaint passage in old Samuel Sewall's Diary ^ 
which might not unfitly be read aloud at every Commence- 
ment in grateful commemoration of the founder of the 
College. On January 26, 169S- he recorded: "I lodged at 
Charlestown at Mrs. Shepards', who tells me Mr. Harvard 
built that house. I lay in the chamber next the street. As I 
lay awake past midnight. In my Meditation I was affected to 



V. HARVARD COLLEGE. 105 

consider how long agoe God had made provision for my com- 
fortable Lodging that night, seeing that was Mr. Harvard's 
house : And that led me to think of Heaven the House not 
made with hands, which God for many Thousands of years has 
been storing with the richest furniture, (saints that are from 
time to time placed there), and that I had some hopes of 
being entertained in that Magnificent Palace, every way fitted 
and furnished. These thoughts were very refreshing to me." ^ 
When the dinner was finished the jugs of coffee were again 
passed down the tables, and cigars and pipes were lighted. I 
was surprised to see how few smokers there were, — not, I 
think, one-fourth as many as there would have been in a simi- 
lar company in England. The speeches that followed were 
somewhat disappointing. As a stranger remarked to me: 
"There was no scholarship in any one of them. They might 
all have been made by men not educated in a university." 
Had they been spoken by the representatives whom Oxford 
generally sends to Parliament, they could not have shown 
fewer signs of the scholar. There was no wit, and next to 
no humour. Lowell has passed away, and Holmes was not 
there. The President, however, spoke well. What he had 
to say, he said briefly and clearly. His was a speech 
which would have more than satisfied Carlyle. Had some 
of the Professors been called on, doubtless an academic 
flavour would have been given to the meeting. Mr. Robert 
Lincoln, the son of the great President, when once he had 
shaken himself free from his jokes, was vigorous enough. He 
defended the Judge who three years earlier had tried the Chi- 
cago anarchist from the charges lately brought against him by 
a man high in authority in the State. The prolonged applause 
with which Mr. Lincoln was welcomed bore testimony not 
1 Diary of Samuel Sewall, I. 447. 



106 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. v. 

only to his own worth, but also to the deep feeling of reve- 
rence with which his father's memory is cherished, a reverence, 
I believe, scarcely less than that felt for Washington. 

Mr. Lincoln was followed by a Roman Catholic Bishop, on 
whom that morning had been conferred the degree of Doctor 
of Laws. He took for the subject of his discourse the lecture 
which Mr. Huxley had lately delivered before the University 
of Oxford. For a full half-hour he overwhelmed him and us 
with his rhetoric. He told an audience of university men 
the whole story of the death of Socrates, as if not only Plato, 
Xenophon, Grote, and Jowett were unknown to everybody 
present, but even Goldsmith's History of Greece were a sealed 
book. It was amazing to me how this rhetorical sermon, 
delivered after dinner, — a teetotal dinner, it is true, — was 
applauded by an audience of university men. I should not 
forget, however, that when there are a thousand present, if 
only one in every five claps his hands or beats the table, the 
tumult is considerable. Americans, I thought, must have an 
amazing appetite for hortatory rhetoric. Scarcely less amaz- 
ing was it to hear in this "Godless University" a Roman 
Catholic Bishop denounce as atheistical, a lecture delivered 
in the very home and centre of all that is venerable in An- 
glican orthodoxy. Oxford the culprit, the charge impiety, 
the accuser a Roman Catholic Bishop, the Court a Unitarian 
University, the verdict Guilty ! I called to mind how, some 
thirty years ago, a far more eloquent Bishop, at the meeting 
of the British Association at Oxford, had scoffed at Darwin 
and his new teaching, and how, the moment he sat down amid 
the laughter and the applause of his audience, Mr. Huxley 
had started up and smitten him heavily. I wished that he 
had been at Harvard to try another fall with another Bishop. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Phi Beta Day. — Foundation of the Society. — Emerson's Oration in 1837. 
— Charles Sumner. — The Meeting and the Dinner. 

ON the day after Commencement I attended the yearly 
meeting of the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa. 
This Society, to which there is nothing that answers in England, 
took its rise towards the close of last century in William and 
Mary College, Virginia. It aims at " the promotion of litera- 
ture and friendly intercourse among scholars." The Harvard 
Chapter was founded in 1781, by virtue of an instrument called 
a "Charter Party," dated December 4, 1779, formally executed 
by the President, officers, and members of the original Society, 
issued to Elisha Parmele, of the University of Cambridge, Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, authorizing him to estabhsh a Chapter there, 
with all rights and powers. Parmele, no doubt, had been 
initiated in Virginia. For many years the Phi Beta was every- 
where a secret Society, with a formal initiation, of an oath of 
secrecy, and certain mysteries, such as a peculiar way of shak- 
ing hands and of knocking at the door. The knock was an 
anapest — two hght knocks followed by one hard. The name 
in full, <E>tXoo-o(^ta Btov Kv(3epvy]Tr]<; (Philosophy, the guide of 
life) , was kept a secret ; the Society was known to the outside 
world by the three initial letters. I do not know whether at 
any time any connection was kept up between the Harvard 
Chapter and the Mother Society. Charter Party, Johnson de- 
fines as a paper relating to a contract, of which each party has 

107 



108 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

a copy. Whatever the contract was, if ever there was one, it 
has long ceased to be enforced. The Harvard Phi Beta is 
much more than a Chapter ; it is a Society in itself, with its 
own independent constitution and government, and with scarcely 
any connection with the other Chapters but in name. No new 
Chapter, however, can be founded without the consent of a cer- 
tain number of the older Chapters. When in the same State 
a second is founded, the first has added to its name the first 
letter of the Greek alphabet, and the second, the second, and 
so on. Thus, the Harvard Chapter is the Phi Beta Kappa, 
Alpha of Massachusetts. In all alike scholarship is made the 
chief ground of admittance. The Society is everywhere re- 
garded with jealousy by that large body of university men who 
have not been able to win their way into it. It is a kind of 
aristocracy in a democratic country. Within eight years of its 
formation " a Committee of the Overseers reported to the 
Board * that there is an institution in the University with the 
nature of which the Government is not acquainted, which tends 
to make a discrimination among the students,' and submitted 
' the propriety of inquiring into its nature and design.' " ^ The 
Chairman of this Committee was that "famous rebel," John 
Hancock. It seems strange that the man who had once been 
the President of the Continental Congress which published the 
Declaration of Independence should now be troubling his head 
about a small secret society got up by a knot of students. 

The Phi Beta was caught in the great wave of popular rage 
against Free Masonry which swept over the land — a wave in 
which were overwhelmed Henry Clay's hopes of arriving at the 
Presidency of the United States. There was not a secret 
society that was not attacked as opposed to the spirit of de- 

1 Quincy's Harvard^ II. 398. 



VI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 109 

mocracy. In 1831 John Quincy Adams, the ex- President, and 
Judge Story, after a long and angry discussion, induced their 
'' brethren " of the Harvard Phi Beta to throw open its secrets 
to the world — to throw them open formally, that is to say, for 
by this time there was nothing left to divulge. Everybody 
knew what the name meant. Everybody could give the Phi 
Beta shake of the hand and the Phi Beta knock at the door. 

For about forty years the Harvard Phi Beta was a College 
Society, holding frequent meetings in men's rooms, where 
essays and poems were read. Each year it had one public 
performance on the morning after Commencement — an anni- 
versary always known as Phi Beta Day. As time went on the 
terminal meetings became less and less frequent, till they 
ceased altogether, while the annual meeting steadily grew in 
importance. On this great day an oration is delivered and an 
original poem is recited. At first the Orators and Poets were 
chosen from among the young Bachelors of Arts. In 1788 
John Quincy Adams, the year after he had taken his degree, 
gave the oration. Gradually older men were selected, while 
the choice was not confined to the "brethren." At the pres- 
ent time, when on the " bead-roll " are " filed" the names of 
men eminent by genius, scholarship, and literature, or by the 
post which they have filled in the world, to be invited to 
address the Society is a mark of high distinction. The Presi- 
dent, that eminent Greek scholar, Professor Goodwin, in an 
address which he delivered before it in 1891, speaking of 
Harvard said : " The Phi Beta is the only society whose right 
to examine the condition of our scholarship is unquestioned. 
She is the only society here which represents College scholar- 
ship pure and simple. All her children either have achieved 
distinction for scholarship in College, or have shown in after 



no HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

life that they might have achieved it if they had wanted to, 
or if the College had let them distinguish themselves in their 
own way. But although Phi Beta keeps in her own hands the 
wholesome power of correcting the mistakes of the College 
authorities, when they either overwork genius or allow it to 
blush unseen, she still accepts without question the body 
of recruits who are sent to her each year as ' distinguished 
scholars.' " ^ Every Phi Beta Day a certain number of hono- 
rary members are elected. It is then that " the mistakes of 
the College authorities " are corrected. In earlier years only 
sixteen ordinary members were admitted, but with the growth 
of the College the number has been raised to twenty-five. 
The election is curiously contrived. In each year the electors 
are eight in number, all Seniors, who in the previous year had 
been themselves elected from the Juniors, not only to act as 
electors next year, but to be members of the Society. They 
had been chosen, not out of the whole body of Juniors, but 
out of the twelve who stood highest on the list for scholarship. 
From among the twenty-five who stand highest in their own 
Class they now choose seventeen, who, added to themselves, 
form the twenty-five new members. *' No honour that Pres- 
cott received at College," writes his biographer, " was valued 
so much by him, or had been so much an object of his ambi- 
tion, as his admission to the Society of the Phi Beta Kappa. 
As the selection was made by the undergraduates themselves, 
and as a single black-ball excluded the candidate, it was a real 
distinction ; and Prescott always liked to stand well with his 
fellows, later in life, no less than in youth." ^ For Motley, 

1 The Present and Ftitui-e of Harvard College, p. I. 
^ Life of Prescott, ed. 1864, p. 24. By the present rule, a candidate 
must obtain a three-fourths vote. 



VI. HARVARD COLLEGE. HI 

who had entered Harvard when he was but thirteen, and who 
" did not aim at or attain a high College rank, the rules were 
stretched so as to include him." ^ The Society was indeed 
quick to detect the genius of his bright and promising youth. 
The correction generally comes many years later. A year 
earlier Charles Sumner had been passed over. Though he 
was a good classical scholar and of wide reading, his neglect 
of mathematics had kept him down in his Class. Seven years 
later he was chosen an honorary member. ^ Had such a 
society existed in the English Cambridge, Wordsworth and 
Charles Darwin would most certainly have been refused admit- 
tance as distinguished scholars. How soon the poet's genius 
would have been discovered it is not easy to say; probably 
not till many years after he had written his great Ode on the 
Intimations of Imnioi'tality. The naturalist would have won 
the honour by his Voyage of the Beagle. In like manner an 
Oxford Phi Beta would have had " to correct the mistakes of 
the University authorities " by the admission of Mr. Ruskin 
and Mr. William Morris. Landor, Shelley, Sir Edward Burne- 
Jones, and Mr. Swinburne would also have had to be admitted ; 
but as they all left without taking a degree, in their cases it 
cannot be said that, so far as examinations went, any mistake 
was committed. 

George Ticknor describes a dinner in 1823 at which the chief 
guest was Chancellor Kent, " superannuated by the Constitution 
of the State of New York, because he is above sixty years old, 
and yet, de facto, in the very flush and vigour of his extraordinary 
faculties." Judge Story and Daniel Webster were present. 
" Story gave as a toast, ' The State of New York, where the 

1 y. L. Motley, by O. W. Holmes, 1889, p. 15. 
^ Life of Charles Sumner, I. 55. 



112 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

law of the land has been so ably administered that it has become 
the land of the law,' to which the Chancellor instantly replied, 
' The State of Massachusetts, the land of Story as well as of 
song ' ; and so it was kept up for three or four hours, not a soul 
leaving the table. It was the finest literary festival I ever wit- 
nessed." ^ 

In 1834 Emerson was the Poet, and in 1837 the Orator. 
" This grand oration," writes Dr. Holmes, '' was our intellectual 
Declaration of Independence. No listener ever forgot that 
address, and among all the noble utterances of the speaker it 
may be questioned if one ever contained more truth in language 
more like that of immediate inspiration." - " His oration," 
said Lowell, " was an event without any former parallel in our 
literary annals, a scene to be always treasured in the memory 
for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded and 
breathless aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, 
what enthusiasm of approach, what grim silence of foregone 
dissent ! It was our Yankee version of a lecture by Abelard, 
our Harvard parallel to the last public appearance of Schelling." 
Lowell was an undergraduate when he witnessed this scene, and 
'' not yet among the * Transcendentalists.' " A year later his 
Class Day Poem shows " that he was untouched by the new 
intellectual spirit, of which Emerson's was the clearest voice." ^ 
" Lighten their darkness and ours too," some must have ex- 
claimed, if the other voices were all less clear than Emerson's. 
Perhaps among the audience was the great advocate, Jeremiah 
Mason, who gave Webster his first lesson in the art of 

"^ Life of George Tic/oior^ I. 340. 
2^?. W. Emerson, by O. W. Holmes, 1885, p. 115. 
^Literary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, 1890, I. 366; Letters of J. R. 
Lowell, I. 31. 



VI. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 113 

talking to a jury. Longfellow records how a few months after 
the famous Phi Beta Oration some one '' asked Mason whether 
he could understand Mr. Emerson. His answer was, ' No, I 
can't; but my daughter can.'"^ Longfellow himself a little 
later said of Emerson : " He is one of the finest lecturers I 
ever heard, with magnificent passages of true prose-poetry. 
But it is all dreamery, after all." ^ If Prescott heard the Address, 
it is Hkely that he was one of those who listened in " grim silence 
of foregone dissent." In November, 1838, he wrote : *' I have 
read as much of Carlyle's French Revolution as I could stand. 
His views certainly, as far as I can estimate them, are trite 
enough. And in short, the whole thing in my humble opinion, 
both as io forme and to fond, is perfectly contemptible."^ He 
who despised Carlyle was little likely to esteem Emerson. An 
eminent American scholar, writing to me of Emerson's Oration 
and of his Address before the Divinity College in the following 
year, says : " Nothing shows the progress of thought in the 
last sixty years more than the undoubted fact that these two 
Addresses were laughed at and even vituperated by men who 
still live to be ashamed of themselves." 

In 1846 the Orator was Charles Sumner. In a blue dress- 
coat with gilt buttons, buff waistcoat, white trousers and gaiters 
— "a new Demosthenes, or Cicero, even like a Grecian god as 
he stood on the platform " — so he seemed to a young lady in 
the audience — for two hours, without the aid of a single note, 
he poured forth in defence of peace and liberty his stream of 
learned but far too copious oratory. " A grand, elevated, elo- 
quent oration from Sumner," Longfellow recorded in his Diary. 
" He spoke it with great ease and elegance ; and was from 

1 Life of H. W. Longfellow^ I. 277. 2 /3_ i_ ^qj^ 

2 LJfe of W. H. Prescott, p. 339. 

I 



114 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

beginning to end triumphant." ^ Even Edward Everett was 
carried away by the young speaker's enthusiasm. " He said," 
as Professor Felton wrote to Sumner, " that it was an amazingly 
splendid affair. ' I never heard it surpassed. I don't know 
that I ever heard it equalled.' Now, Charley (Felton con- 
tinued), you may well be proud of having drawn forth from 
these stony lips such human tones of speech." The vener- 
able ex-President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, 
who attended the Society for the last time, — he was in 
his eightieth year, — thinking how his part was nearly played in 
the struggle for the freedom of the slave, said to the Orator : " I 
look from Pisgah to the Promised Land ; you must enter upon 
it." '' 

A curious fact is recorded of the poem which, under the title 
of Reveille, was recited before the Society in the summer fol- 
lowing the revolt of the Southern States. " It was reprinted in 
the South during the war, with such changes as made it serve 
the Confederate cause. It was afterwards reprinted in England 
as evidence of the spirit which animated the Confederacy." ^ 

Ticknor, writing in 1863, ^^^^ looking back fifty years, says : 
" The <l> B K, it should be remembered, was at that period a 
Society of much more dignity and consequence than it is now. 
It had an annual public exhibition, largely attended by such 
graduates as were its members, and indeed, by the more culti- 
vated portion of the community generally." ^ He must surely 
have had something of the old man's failing in the slight which 
he thus cast on modern days, and something, moreover, of the 

1 Life ofH. W. Longfellow, II. 55. 
- Life of Charles Sumner, III. 15-20. 

^ Library of Llarvard University: Bibliographical Contributions, ^Q. 
42, by W. H. Tillinghast, p. 7, 
* Life of W. LI. Prescott, p. 24. 



VI. » HARVARD COLLEGE. 115 

old man's ignorance of what was going on almost under his 
very nose. At all events, if the Society was for a brief period 
under an eclipse, it soon shone forth in all its brightness. Be- 
tween i860 and 1880 it numbered among its Presidents, Vice- 
Presidents, Orators, and Poets, Emerson, Sumner, Dana, Lowell, 
Holmes, G. W. Curtis, and Bret Harte. Lowell, who was Presi- 
dent from 1863 to 1 87 1, describes how, in 1865, he had sat up 
late the night before Phi Beta Day with a few friends who had 
been with him at the Commencement dinner. '' Per Bacco 
and tobacco, how wisely silly we were ! I forgot for a few 
blessed hours that I was a Professor, and felt as if I were some- 
thing real. But Phi Beta came next day, and wasn't I tired ? 
Presiding from 9 a.m. till 6.30 p.m. is no joke ! " ^ He had de- 
tected a certain sameness in the inspiration of the Poets of the 
Society. In a letter to Professor Child he says : " I have 
noticed that Class and Phi Beta poems almost always begin 
with an ' as ' — at any rate they used to in my time, before a 
certain Boylston Professor took 'em in hand." E.g. — 

As the last splendours of expiring day 

Round Stoughton's chimneys cast a lingering ray, 

So — 

And sometimes there was a whole flight of ' as-t^ ' leading 
up to the landing of a final so, where one could take breath and 
reflect on what he had gone through." ^ 

In 1867 Emerson was for the second time appointed Orator. 
" His oration," wrote Lowell, " was more disjointed than usual, 
even with hi7n. It began nowhere and ended everywhere, and 

1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 389. 

2 Professor Child was at that time the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric 
and Oratory at Harvard. 

^ Letters of J. R. Lowell^ II. 237. 



116 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

yet, as always with that divine man, it left you feeling that 
something beautiful had passed that way — something more 
beautiful than anything else, and like the rising and setting of 
stars. Every possible criticism might have been made on it 
but one — that it was not noble. There was a tone in it that 
awakened all elevating associations. He boggled, he lost his 
place, he had to put on his glasses, but it was as if a creature 
from some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs, and it was 
our fault, not his. It was chaotic, but it was all such stuff as 
stars are made of, and you couldn't help feeling that, if you 
waited awhile, all that was nebulous would be whirled into 
planets, and would assume the mathematical gravity of system. 
All through it I felt something in me that cried, ' Ha, ha, to the 
sound of the trumpets.' " 

In 1 88 1 the Society celebrated the hundredth anniversary of 
its foundation. Delegates were present from all parts of the 
country, each representing a Chapter of the Phi Beta. The 
Orator was Wendell Phillips. It was his last great speech and 
was worthy of the occasion. He took for his subject the 
Cowardice of Educated Men. 

Though the Phi Beta is not a part of the University, is in no- 
wise under its government, and is not even mentioned in the 
Catalogue, nevertheless it is recognized by the College authori- 
ties. It is in the University Theatre that the Oration is deliv- 
ered and the Poems recited, and in Massachusetts Hall that the 
dinner is held. In the Yard the procession is formed in which 
the Orator and Poet are conducted to the Theatre. I did not 
discover so much state as I had seen on Commencement Day. 
Gowns were not worn and there was no Governor of the Com- 
monwealth with his gorgeous Staff. Nevertheless there was a 
long and imposing line, and what was wanting in show was, no 



VI. , HARVARD COLLEGE. 117 

doubt, made up in intellect. The guests, instead of being in 
front as on the day before, now brought up the rear. Last of 
all came the President of the Society, with the Orator, General 
Walker, who is renowned, not only as a soldier who did good ser- 
vice in the war with the Southern States, but also as a Political 
Economist. He is, moreover. President of the Boston School of 
Technology. In front of them walked the Poet, Mr. Maurice 
Thompson, accompanied by the Roman Catholic Bishop. The 
last time, perhaps, that the Orator and Poet had met was face to 
face on some battle-field in the Civil War, for Mr. Thompson, too, 
had played his part in it in the army of the South. In the The- 
atre, the President of the University, who had walked with the 
guests, took his place in the area among the ordinary members. 
The roomy dais was occupied by the President and Chaplain 
of the Society, the Orator and the Poet. They looked some- 
what forlorn in the midst of so large and vacant a space. They 
should have had, by way of support, all the past Orators, Poets, 
and Chaplains who could be got together. 'Doubtless there 
were not a few of them in the audience. The Chaplain, who 
ought to have opened the proceedings with a prayer, through 
the forgetfulness of the President, was not called upon. How- 
ever, the prayer was not lost, for the venerable man gave it us 
by way of grace at the dinner, and a very good prayer it was — 
at least for these modern days, when the art of praying seems 
well-nigh forgotten. As a grace it did not do quite so well. 
The oration was an able and soldierly defence of athleticism. 
There were some high in authority at Harvard who thought 
that in a university, when athleticism seems running mad, such 
a defence was altogether out of place. They maintained, more- 
over, that the subject was ill-suited for a learned society. The 
Poet had taken for his theme Lincoln's grave. In his verses 



118 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

he let his hearers know that he had fought for the South. He 
was, he said, a Georgian, and when Georgia had called him he 
had not hesitated to obey. Nevertheless, avowed and impeni- 
tent rebel that he was, he carried his audience of Northerners 
with him by his reverence for Lincoln. He sat down in the 
midst of loud applause, which seemed to me his due ; though 
it was by no means easy to judge of the real merits of a poem 
that was recited in so strange a scene. My thoughts would 

wander to 

" Old, unhappy far-off things 
And battles long ago,'" 

as I contrasted his frail body with the General's strong and 
commanding form, and thought of all that the two men had 
done and undergone. In the audience was many a man who 
had fought in the Northern armies ; the Theatre in which we 
were sitting had been built as a memorial to the Harvard men 
who had fallen in the great war ; and here, in this very spot, in 
the very home of all that is now strongest in Northern senti- 
ment and conviction, was this Southern rebel speaking tenderly 
and reverently of the great President, and touching these New 
Englanders to the heart. 

In more than one way did this Southerner show his magna- 
nimity. He had this great audience of Northerners at his 
mercy — a poet's mercy ; and nevertheless he was brief. His 
recitation did not last fifteen minutes. I was told of a recent 
occasion when the bard had six times paused in his inspiration 
to drink iced water, and only paused every time the clock 
sounded the hour or the quarters. 

We sat down to dinner at least two hundred in number ; 
all the members ranged according to their seniority. At the 
high table were the President of the Society, the Orator, the 



VI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 119 

Poet, and the guests. The President of the University sat 
among his old comrades, the men of his Class. The kindly 
Roman Catholic Bishop, having despatched Mr. Huxley the 
day before, being the second time called on for a speech, took 
nearly half an hour to kill him again. Perhaps, however, his 
discourse should rather be looked upon as a funeral sermon, 
such as in the good old days an Inquisitor might have preached 
over the ashes of a heretic whom he had first sent to the stake. 
I thought regretfully of the after-dinner speech which Bishop 
Blougram would have made, if indeed that Right Reverend 
Prelate would have been capable of speaking inspired by noth- 
ing stronger than iced water and coffee. 

In the speech which I was called on to make I brought for- 
ward the claims of my own University to a share in the great 
honour of founding Harvard. It was, I admitted, to Cam- 
bridge that all my hearers looked up as their ancient Alma 
Mater. To Oxford, however, scarcely less gratitude was due. 
To her might be justly applied the lines which the poet used of 
the great English statesman : — 

" Nor mourn we less his perished worth 
"Who bade the conqueror go forth." 

Oxford had educated Laud, and Laud had driven the Puri- 
tans across the seas. When all the orators had had their say 
the whole company rose, and linking hands so as to form a vast 
chain, sang Auld Lang Syne. Thus an interesting day and a 
pleasant gathering were brought to a close. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Class Day. — Its Origin and Growth. — Orators, Poets, and Odists. — 
The New England Summer. — The " Spreads." — The Exercises at the 
Tree. 

OF the three great days of Commencement week I had 
seen two. I had seen the University in all its state 
conferring honours and degrees, and I had seen the gathering 
of a Society composed of the most distinguished graduates. 
One day, and by no means the least curious and interesting of 
the three, I had missed seeing through the inclemency of the 
weather. The festivities of Commencement week begin with 
the Seniors' Class Day — a day as unlike anything we have in 
England as Phi Beta itself. On it the undergraduates, or 
rather the Seniors, reign supreme. The Yard, the Theatre, 
Memorial Hall, I might almost say the College itself, are all 
under their rule. It is the first but the great day of the Feast, 
" the greatest day," according to 77^*? Crimson, "■ in a Harvard 
student's career." "The old-time glory of Commencement," 
we are told, " has departed." To a stranger, however, a good 
deal of it seems left. Class Day, which gathers as great a 
crowd of the young and happy as even Eights' Week or 
Commemoration at Oxford, has taken more than two centuries 
to attain its present importance. Almost from the first it was 
the custom for the Seniors each year to choose one of their 

number who, in the name of all, should take leave of the 

1 20 



CHAP. VII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 121 

College in a Valedictory Oration in the Latin language. Who 
but the philosophic student would believe that out of this 
humble beginning could have sprung all the gay costumes, the 
feastings, the dancing, the music, the illuminations, and the 
wildest of struggles? In somewhat early days the Valedictory 
was accompanied by a large consumption of strong Hquors. 
In 1 760 each Senior brought his bottle of wine to the meeting. 
Josiah Quincy, describing a dinner some seventy years ago, 
says : " Caleb Cushing came in, and gave for a toast, ' The 
bands of friendship, which always tighten when they are wet.' 
When we had all drunk our skins full, we marched round to 
all the Professors' houses, danced round the Rebellion and 
Liberty Trees, and then returned to the Hall. A great many 
of the Class were half-seas over." ^ In 1834 " iced punch was 
brought in buckets.^ Colonel T. W. Higginson of the Class of 
1 84 1 " can remember when the Senior Class assembled annu- 
ally round ' Liberty Tree ' on Class Day, and ladled out bowls 
of punch for every passer-by ; — till every Cambridge boy saw 
a dozen men in various stages of inebriation about the College 
Yard."^ Perhaps the Colonel describes not the scenes of his 
undergraduate days but of his boyhood, for it was in 1838, we 
are told, that " President Quincy encouraged the conversion of 
the Day into the respectable celebration which it has since 
been."* To the class of 1838 " Lowell, and the sculptor Story, 
and other congenial souls belonged." To them the main 
credit of this conversion has been given.^ Lowell's influence, 

1 Figures of the Past, p. 49. 

'^ LListorical Sketch, etc., by W. R. Thayer, p. 57. 
^ Harvard'' s Better Self, by W. R. Bigelow, p. 7. 
* Historical Sketch, etc., p. 58. 

^ By Henry Ware, in .-i//'/^/tf;zV y^«r;^c^/ for March, 1870; quoted in 
History of Higher Education in Massachusetts^ by G. G. Bush, p. 197. 



122 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

whatever it was, must have been exerted from a distance, for 
all the spring and summer he was in a state of "suspension" 
some miles away. His neglect of his prescribed studies — a 
neglect in which perhaps, like him who was bidden to '' let 
Euclid rest and Archimedes pause," he was "not unwise" — 
had been visited by the Harvard form of rustication. " Suspen- 
sion," as we read in the Catalogue, " is a separation from the 
University for a fixed period of time. It may be accompanied 
with a requirement of residence in a specified place, and of 
the performance of specified tasks." Lowell had been sent 
to the pleasant village of Concord " to carry on his studies 
under the charge of the Minister." He was not as yet an 
Emersonian, or he might have sought for consolation from the 
Philosopher of Concord under the disappointment that came 
upon him. Though he had been chosen Class Poet, he was 
not allowed to be present to read his poem to his classmates. 
" It was printed for their use, and the little pamphlet, his first 
independently printed production, has become one of the 
desiderata of bibliomaniacs." ^ 

As a necessary part of the modern refinements, by whomso- 
ever they were introduced, the friends of the Seniors were 
invited to the ceremony. Wine and punch soon fell into the 
background as sisters and cousins came to the front. For the 
ladies elegant collations — "Spreads," to use the Harvard 
term — were provided by the wealthier members of the Class 
or by a subscription. There was dancing in the open air in 
the Yard and under cover in the Hall. In 1846 Longfellow 
records in Mn Journal : "July 16, Class Day. In the after- 
noon a dance in Harvard Hall ; then the farewell shouts at the 
doors of the several Colleges, and the wild ring around the old 

1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. 27, 31. 




Q 

DC 
< 

W 
DC 
H 



VII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 123 

'Liberty Tree.' " ^ In 1850 the following account was writ- 
ten : " Cotillons and the easier dances are performed in the 
Yard, but the sport closes in the Hall with the Polka and other 
fashionable steps. The Seniors again form, and make the 
circuit of the buildings, great and small. They then assemble 
under the Liberty Tree, around which, with hands joined, they 
dance after singing the students' adopted song, Aiild Lang 
Syne. At parting, each member takes a sprig or a flower from 
the beautiful ' Wreath ' which surrounds the ' farewell tree,' 
which is sacredly treasured as a last memento of College scenes 
and enjoyments."^ Adopted, in this quotation, must be, I 
think, a misprint for adapted, for Burns's song has been fitted 
to Harvard after the following fashion : — 

" Ye rooms, ye halls, ye rough old bricks, 
Ye trees, ye walks of mine ! 
How are ye hallowed by the dreams 
Of ' auld lang syne.' " ^ 

Every year the gathering grows larger and larger, and the 
" Spreads " become more numerous and more elaborate. In 
the Class Day Supplement fo the Hat'vard C?'ijnson, I found a 
column headed : " A List of the men who will spread, with the 
places where the Spreads will be given." There were eighty- 
eight hosts in all, but as they had clubbed together in smaller 
or larger groups, there w^ere only fourteen places where their 
hospitality was dispensed. At the end of the list were such 
announcements as the following : " The Pi Eta Spread is in 
the Hemenway Gymnasium on Friday in the middle of the 
day." " The Spread in Lower Massachusetts is on Friday at 6. 

1 Life of LI. VV. Longfellow, II. 50. 

'■^ College Words and Customs, quoted in An Historical Sketch, etc., p. 58. 

^ Quincy's Harvard, II. 672. 



124 HARVARD COLLEGE. CHAf, 

After the Spread the hosts will receive their friends in their 
rooms." So extensive have become the preparations that " the 
constant services of a hired manager are required." In the 
early part of the century it was often on Commencement Day, 
and not on Class Day, that the young Bachelor entertained his 
friends. When Prescott took his degree, his father, proud of 
his son's having a part assigned to him in the Exercises, gave 
a sumptuous dinner to over five hundred guests in a great 
marquee. The day ended with " dancing and frolicking on 
the green." ^ 

The simple ceremony of the " Valedictory " had expanded 
on more sides than one. To the Orator a Poet, as has been 
seen, had been added ; and later on an Odist, an Ivy Orator, 
a Chorister, a Hymiiist, and a Chaplain. The Chaplain, the 
Hymnist, the Orator, and the Odist represented the sober side 
of life ; the Poet and Ivy Orator its humorous. The Ivy Orator 
took his name from the custom that once prevailed of each 
Class planting an ivy-shoot on Class Day. At the place where 
it was put into the ground, he delivered his oration ; but as 
the plant never grew, no doubt because it could not stand the 
summer heats, so the custom was abandoned. He answers to 
the Terrce Filius of the Oxford Commemoration in the old 
days, but he never goes to the lengths on which that gross, 
though licensed, buffoon used to venture. There are no scurri- 
lous jests uttered by him against the President and the Pro- 
fessors. About the beginning of the present century the 
Orator ventured to give his Valedictory in English. This 
innovation the Faculty resisted, as " it gives," to quote their 
words, " more the appearance of a public Exhibition designed 
to display the talents of the Performers and entertain a mixed 

1 Life of W. H. Prescott, p. 25. 



vii. Harvard college. 12S 

audience than of a merely valedictory address of the Class to 
the Government, and taking leave of the Society and of one 
another, in which Adieu Gentlemen and Ladies from abroad 
are not particularly interested." ^ In the end the Faculty gave 
in, as Faculties almost always do give in, and Latin disappeared 
from Class Day. The Odist composes an ode to be sung to 
the tune of Fair Harvard. The Chorister had to write the 
music for the Class Song and conduct the singing at the Tree. 
For the Song, by a vote of the Class of 1891, Fair Harvard was 
substituted ; so that one-half of the Chorister's task has been 
swept away. The Chaplain and Hymnist have disappeared. 
The management of the day is under the control of a Secretary, 
three Marshals, and three Committee-men. Every October, 
soon after the beginning of the Academic Year, the Seniors 
meet to elect their Orators, Poets, and the rest. Those only 
have votes who are candidates for the Bachelor's degree at the 
next Commencement. The voting is by secret ballot. In the 
hst of the Poets are found the names of Story the Jurist, 
Palfrey and Bancroft the historians, Emerson, Holmes and 
Lowell. It is more by chance than by the discernment of his 
classmates that Emerson appears in this goodly company, for 
he was not chosen till seven of his comrades had refused to be 
inspired.^ Among the Orators less distinguished names are 
found. In 1846, however, Longfellow recorded in his Jouj-- 
naP : ''Class Day. The Oration by Child, extremely good; 
one of the best — on the whole the best — I have heard on 
such occasions." Child is Professor F. J. Child, the learned 
editor of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. On the 

^ An Lfistorical Sketch, etc., p. 57. 

2 R. IV. Emerson, by O. W. Holmes, p. 45. 

3 £iy^ of LL. IV. Longfellozv, Vol. IL p. 50. 



126 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

publication of the first part Lowell wrote to him : " You 
have really built an imperishable monument, and I rejoice as 
heartily as the love I bear you gives me the right in having 
lived to see its completion." ^ A few years ago the choice of 
the class for Orator fell on a negro, in whom there was not a 
drop of white blood. That a negro can be a fine speaker had 
been shown long before by Frederick Douglass. Whether this 
young man was chosen solely for his merits or as a noble 
expression of sympathy for a despised race, I do not know. 
Perhaps in the choice there was a touch of kindly humour. 

The Orators and Poets of 1893 all distinguished themselves 
in the examinations. To two of them parts were assigned in 
the exercises at Commencement. In the Class Day election the 
balance, it seems, is held true between mind and body ; the 
four who had been selected for their gifts of oratory and poetry 
were balanced by four who were selected for their services in 
athletics. The Marshals were the Captains of the Baseball and 
Football Teams and of the Boat ; the Secretary was the Man- 
ager of the Football Eleven ? The three Committee-men 
were, no doubt, if not Orators, Poets, or Athletes, at least 
good fellows. 

The greatest day in a Harvard student's career is surely also 
the longest day. On rising, he puts on evening dress, and he 
does not take it off till midnight, and often till long after. 
There is, however, for a brief interval an easier costume worn 
by those who take part in the exercises at the Tree. According 
to the old custom, to the evening dress a tall silk hat was added, 
but by the recent vote by which cap and gown have been made 
part of the costume of the day, the hat is no longer needed. 

1 Letters of J. R. Lowell., II. 304. 

"^Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January, 1S93, p. 306. 



VII. HARVARD COLLEGE.^ 127 

How much is done in the course of this midsummer's day is 
shown by the following official Programme : — 

" 9 A.M. The Senior Class will assemble in front of Holworthy and 
march to Appleton Chapel, where prayer will be offered by Rev. William 
Lawrence, S.T.D.i 

" 1 0.45 . The Senior Class will assemble in front of Holworthy and march 
to Sanders Theatre. 

" 2 to 5 P.M. Music in the Yard. 

" 3 to 5. Dancing in Memorial Hall. 

" 5. The Senior Class will assemble in front of Holworthy, cheer the 
College buildings and march to the Tree. 

" 8 to II. Dancing in the Gymnasium and Memorial Hall. Music and 
Illumination in the College Yard. 

" 8.0. The Glee Club will sing in front of Holworthy. 

" 9.0. The Banjo Club and the Mandolin and Guitar Club will play on 
the Law School steps." 

Even when the last dance has come to an end and the last 
guest has left, sleep, I am told, does not fall upon the College. 
The Seniors spend the few hours of night in talking over the 
stirring doings of the great day and in fond memories of their 
student life now so rapidly drawing to its close. 

" Et jam nox humida caelo 
Prsecipitat, suadentque cadentia sidera somnos," 

" Nature's soft nurse " bids, but bids in vain. 

The weather, which I am told almost always favours Class 
Day, this year showed it no indulgence. I have heard Ameri- 
cans on our side of the Atlantic complain of the changeable- 
ness of the climate, not only of England, but of Europe. It 
was a disappointment to me to find how uncertain a New Eng- 
land June can be. There was a variety in it that was worthy 

iDr. Lawrence last year succeeded Phillips Brooks as Bishop of 
Massachusetts. 



128 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

of Cumberland or Devonshire. On the afternoon of the seventh 
of the month the thermometer in my room in Cambridge 
stood at 91, though the Venetian shutters had been kept closed. 
On the thirteenth, at a little village on the sea-coast we were all 
sitting round a blazing log fire. On the seventeenth fires were 
kept burning all day. On the twenty-fourth, calling at two houses 
in Cambridge, in both I found my friends sitting round the fire. 
In the southern parts of England I had never seen a fire so late 
in the summer, and yet Boston is in the same latitude as Rome. 
If the summer is late in coming and is uncertain even when it 
has come, in the clearness of the air ' and the blueness of the 
sea, on fine days, it displays the charms of the Mediterranean 
shore. Hawthorne was disappointed by the Italian skies. They 
were, he said, what he had been used to all his life in New 
England. In the exaggerated expectations which he had formed 
of them, he had been misled by the English poets, who had 
judged them by the quiet colours of cloudy England. It was 
with no Italian sky, but with cold and heavy rain that Class Day 
set in. The break in the weather that we anxiously looked for 
never came, and I was kept a prisoner to the house the whole 
day. The following description of all that went on I quote 
from a letter written by my wife : — 

" Class Day this year broke wet and stormy, much to our 
disappointment. Great trouble had been taken to secure for 
us tickets for everything worth seeing. Without these tickets 
no one can gain admission. The Graduating Students are the 
hosts, and issue them to all as their guests. At ten we had 
to be in our places in Sanders Theatre. The whole place 
looked very much like the Sheldonian at Commemoration, 
crowded with mothers and sisters and cousins in gay sum- 
mer dresses, a good many of the Professors and a fair 



VII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 129 

sprinkling of young men. We missed, however, the gowns. 
Professors looking only like ordinary mortals ; and there was 
no Undergraduates' Gallery and no noise such as we are used 
to at home. Imagine, if you can, a Commemoration at which 
all was done * decently and in order,' no uproar, no foolish 
jokes ; but that is a flight beyond the huagination of any one 
who has seen and heard Oxford men on such an occasion. 

" The body of the Hall was reserved for those students who 
were to receive their degree, and at eleven they marched in, 
two and two, in cap and gown. The Bishop-elect followed 
with the students who are the office-bearers of the year ; they 
took their seats on the dais on chairs placed in front of palms 
and flowering shrubs, with a gigantic '93 in flowers fastened 
to the gallery over their heads. In this gallery was an excel- 
lent string band which played between the various exercises. 
The meeting began with prayer, the Bishop praying in the 
name of the Class of 1893; and then the Senior Marshal 
called upon the Orator to begin his Oration. The Orator, 
who was a member of the graduating Class chosen for the 
office by his classmates, stepped to the front of the dais and 
began. He had learned his oration carefully by heart, and 
had been trained in the method of delivery ; he spoke it 
well ; matter and style were good, but they lacked fire and 
spontaneity. He was followed in turn by the Poet, the Ivy 
Orator (whose business it is to make a comic speech full of 
allusions to what has lately been happening in the University) , 
and the Odist, who repeated a short ode of his own composi- 
tion. It was then sung by every one to the tune of Fair Har- 
vard, i.e. ' My lodging is on the cold ground,' which may be 
called the national air of Harvard. After this we were dis- 
missed by the Bishop-elect with his blessing. 

K 



130 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

"The one distinguishing feature of the gathering was its 
completely democratic nature. The President of the Uni- 
versity sat there with his wife in the central seat of the Audi- 
torium ; but he was nothing more than one of the many 
spectators. The Dons, as Dons, were non-existent. The 
men of '93 were everything. They had chosen the spokes- 
men of the day ; orations, poem, and ode were all addressed 
to them ; every arrangement had been made by them, and 
was carried out by them as supreme. Even in what was said 
and sung there was not the slightest reference to any other 
authority. Harvard took form in one's mind as a large 
democracy, the students governing themselves in all things. 

" Our next duty was to attend one of the ' Spreads.' Spread 
is the name given to a meal provided by the students, and 
means lunch or supper, or still more often one that goes on 
a great part of the day. It is of the nature of a ball supper ; 
salads, sandwiches, and ice-creams, with many varieties of 
cake, being what is usually provided. Strawberries and cream 
are usually added during the summer. One of the largest and 
gayest of the Spreads on Friday was held in the great Gym- 
nasium. Here the large hall had been adorned with a pro- 
fusion of flowers and evergreens, and with garlands hung from 
side to side of the high roof. Again a great '93 in flowers 
was conspicuous in front of the gallery. When we arrived 
there about half-past three o'clock, dancing was going on 
vigorously. The Class of '93 looked very droll dancing in 
cap and gown. Many of the girls had pretty dresses and 
pretty faces, too, the exercise giving them just that touch of 
colour which American girls so often lack. The chaperones 
sat round the room, and the long refreshment-table was down 
one side ; the band in the gallery above. The expense of the 



VII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 131 

whole was borne by a small party of young men of the Gradu- 
ating Class. 

" By half-past four the ball was over, the Gymnasium deserted, 
and we were once more plodding through the rain and mire, in 
goloshes and waterproofs, to the quadrangle in which were to 
take place the Tree Exercises, the thing I was especially anxious 
to see. This part of Harvard Class Day is always considered 
the most important, as well as the prettiest sight for visitors to 
see. The tree, a tall and stately American elm, stands in the 
centre of a wide lawn with College buildings on three sides. 
For Class Day the lawn is enclosed by tiers of wooden raised 
seats, and the tree is garlanded by a long wreath of flowers 
wound many times closely round the trunk about ten or twelve 
feet above the ground ; while the date of the year in crimson 
and white flowers is placed some eight feet higher still. Above 
this again the branches spring, the bark below being quite un- 
broken and offering a difficult task enough to climbers. The 
rain continued as pitilessly as ever. The seats had been 
covered with awnings, but not to much effect. When we 
arrived they were all shining with water, and every here and 
there a small stream descended from some hole, or drop by 
drop fell upon some devoted bonnet from a thinner spot in the 
canvas. At five o'clock the Class of '94 marched in under 
umbrellas ; followed by more of '95 and '96 ; then all in turn 
seated themselves on carpets which had been hurriedly spread 
upon the grass. A large group of Graduates took up their 
position near them ; when all were settled, to the sound of a 
band in marched the men of '93. First came the three marshals, 
then the band, and then some seventy or eighty young fellows 
in football dress, stout jerseys, buff knickerbockers, long stock- 
ings and buff shoes, and all bareheaded. They came in two by 



132 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

two ; the men behind with their hands on the shoulders of those 
in front, making a long, continuous winding chain, which wound 
round and round the tree, and finally formed a compact mass 
encircling it and the Senior Marshal, who stood at its foot in 
cap and gown. Those of the Class who were not to take part 
in the struggle, also in cap and gown, took up their position 
near. 

" And now began the cheering. Led by the Marshal they gave 
the Harvard yell — Rah-rah-rah ; Rah-rah-rah ; Rah-rah-rah ; 
Har — vard ! rising in a sort of yell and repeated over and over 
again in perfect time. It was begun first by '93, and then taken 
up by '94, '95, '96, and the Graduates in regular succession. They 
cheered the Classes; they cheered the Halls ; they cheered the 
President and a few favourite Professors, and then they cheered 
the Ladies ; each body cheering alone and in regular order. 
Finally all joined in cheering Harvard, and then the whole mass 
standing, visitors and students together, sang Fair Harvai'd. 
As we came to the last line of the song the first marshal gave a 
signal to the athletes, and at once a tussling began ; each one 
of them trying to get at the trunk of the tree and to mount 
high enough on the shoulders of the man in front to be within 
reach of the garland. The struggle was tremendous, like a 
gigantic scrimmage at football ; the mass seemed at one time 
all legs and arms, at another a furious combat in which some 
one must lose hfe or limb. First one and then another rose 
high on the backs or shoulders of those below, only to fall back 
and be lost in the crowd. The spectators cheered and shouted 
and screamed with laughter. When at last the first bunch of 
flowers was successfully torn away, we all cheered as if some 
great and glorious victory had been gained. It took about ten 
minutes to gain possession of the long wreath ; bit by bit it was 



VII. HARVARD COLLEGE. I33 

clutched away, and flung among the men below. But there 
still remained the crimson '93 high above, and I dare say 
another ten minutes were spent before the frantic efforts to 
reach it were crowned with success. Only two or three men were 
brave enough to attempt the feat ; the famous gymnast of the 
year was the one finally to achieve it. Again and again he was 
dragged down ; again and again we saw him engaged in a free 
fight with obstinate opponents from the vantage ground of the 
shoulders of his supporters ; his jersey was torn, his body must 
have been covered with bruises and his nails all in pieces ; but 
in the end the rosy '93 fell amid the shouts of everybody, and 
the fun was over. 

" But only for a time. The crowd dispersed to rest and eat, 
and dress for the various balls and receptions which closed this 
busy day. Those students who were lucky enough to have 
rooms looking on the College Yard had them thronged with 
guests by eight in the evening. From wide-open windows every 
one was looking down on the coloured lamps hung from the 
fine trees and listening to the Harvard Glee Club, who, in spite 
of the heavy rain, sang manfully under their umbrellas the songs 
that have been sung for so many years. But we were too wet 
and too tired to go out again, and we feel that we shall have to 
come back some day to Cambridge to see Class Day under a 
blue sky and learn what it really is." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Undergraduates. — Harvardians and Oxonians contrasted. — The Ath- 
letic Craze. — A Baseball Match. — Games regulated by the Governing 
Body of the University. — President Eliot's Report. 

OF my first impressions of the undergraduates, I made the 
following record in my journal': "They are shorter and 
slighter than our Oxford men, with much less colour; a year or 
two older, I think, unless the hot climate makes them look 
older. I do not see so many gross, stupid faces, but, on the 
other hand, I have not as yet noticed any of those fresh-col- 
oured, pleasant, innocent faces which are so attractive at Ox- 
ford." On seeing more of the men, I came to doubt whether in 
appearance they were older than our undergraduates. Near the 
end of my residence in Cambridge, I thus sum up my obser- 
vations : " How few are the signs here of university life com- 
pared with those seen in Oxford ! In Oxford, a real town 
though it is, and not a suburban village like Cambridge, the 
presence of the students, nevertheless, is much more conspi- 
cuous. No one can walk about its streets and roads without 
noticing the large number of young men — often moving in a 
long stream — young men, moreover, who, as their very ap- 
pearance, their dress, their manner of walking, their features 
show, are not in business. In the afternoon their suit of 
flannel makes it clear that they are bent on pleasure, or, at 
all events, on exercise; in the morning and evening the cap 
and gown indicate the student. The style, the very make of 

134 



CHAP. VIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 135 

their clothes, are not those of the young business man. Their 
easy, confident step distinguishes them from the ordinary youth 
of a town. The separation of the Colleges distributes this life 
over the city, so that undergraduates and graduates are con- 
stantly passing along the streets from College to College, or 
from College to the University buildings. The Parks, the 
upper river, the lower river, and the Cherwell increase this 
diffusion. It is increased, moreover, by the Englishman's 
love of walking and riding." 

In the American Cambridge there is very little of this open 
and palpable university life. The College buildings, which 
are numerous, are mostly in one enclosure, the Yard. Those 
which are not there — the more modern additions — are sepa- 
rated from them only by a road. The students, therefore, in 
going to and from lectures, do not cross the town. Outside 
the Yard I have never seen them moving in a stream, except 
on the days of some great baseball or football match, and 
then they have but a few yards to traverse. Beyond the im- 
mediate surroundings of the College they are scarcely noticea- 
ble. A stranger, whose walks did not lead him past the Yard, 
might for some time live within a quarter of a mile of the 
College, without discovering that he was in a University 
town. Boston attracts the students in large numbers, and to 
Boston they go, not on foot but on the tram-cars. In their 
dress, their general appearance, their gait, I discover little 
of the undergraduate. In England and Germany this clan 
does not hide itself. An Oxford man lets the world know 
that he is an Oxford man. His self-satisfaction gives an 
assurance, sometimes even a kind of swagger, to his whole 
behaviour. He walks along the High Street as if it belonged, 
not to the Corporation, but to himself. His apparel too oft 



136 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

proclaims the man. There is nothing of this here. The 
Harvard undergraduate talks of himself and his comrades as 
boys. He has not learnt to swagger. Probably it takes many 
years at a great English public school to acquire the true 
manner. Like the art of beating the French at Waterloo, it 
is best learnt on the Playing Fields of Eton. His dress, too, 
is much less costly and showy; for the most part it is of a 
dark cloth. I notice none of those waistcoats with which an 
Oxford man dazzles the poorer scholars of his college and 
startles his friends at home. The ordinary Harvard man 
might have stepped out of a city office or a Normal School for 
Teachers. He belongs to a poorer class. Clothing, more- 
over, is so expensive that many have to be content with one 
suit a year. An undergraduate who had visited Europe in the 
previous Long Vacation, told me that the clothes he was wear- 
ing, for which he had paid three pounds in England, in Cam- 
bridge would have cost him six. Every afternoon there are 
no doubt men to be seen in the dress of young athletes; but 
though there is the greatest possible interest taken in the 
yearly boat-race with Yale, and in the baseball and football 
matches, nevertheless, those who share in these sports are 
far fewer than we should find in an English university. It 
is, I am sure, a picked few rather than the mass of men who 
play. Nowhere is there such a sight as is to be seen any 
afternoon at Oxford on the river and in the Parks on the days 
when there is no great race or match. The build of the men 
proves, moreover, that they have not gone through that long 
course of rough games which has formed the active and 
powerful frames of the young English undergraduates. I am 
told, however, that during the winter half of the year, North 
Avenue is a training-ground for runners, who in the afternoon 



viii. • HARVARD COLLEGE. I37 

and evening sweep along the "sidewalks," as if the smooth 
pavement had been laid down for them, and not for quiet, 
decent Christians. A noble gymnasium, moreover, has been 
lately built, which is much frequented. "The fever of re- 
nown," gained not by the brain, but by the body, is spreading 
rapidly through the veins of young America. By its "strong 
contagion" Harvard has been badly caught. One of my 
friends, whose three sons have recently graduated, lamented 
to me the excessive interest they all took in the contests of 
athletes. How different it was when he was young ! In those 
happy days his brother, when home from College, used to talk 
of books. His sons' talk was of running and jumping, of 
rowing, baseball, and football. The change is great, indeed, 
since the time when Dr. Wendell Holmes lamented the gen- 
eral indifference of the youth of New England to bodily 
exercise. In the seventh chapter of The Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table, he wrote in the year 1858: "I am satisfied 
that such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed, soft-muscled, 
paste-complexioned youth as we can boast in our Atlantic 
cities never before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. 
... We have a few good boatmen, — no good horsemen that 
I hear of, — I cannot speak for cricketing, — but as for any 
great athletic feat performed by a gentleman in these lati- 
tudes, society would drop a man who should run round the 
Common in five minutes." 

Emerson, nearly thirty years ago, speaking of Harvard, 
"compared later times unfavourably with his own. 'The 
Class, ' he said, * thought nothing of a man who did not have 
an enthusiasm for something. ' " ^ There is enthusiasm enough 

^ The Present and Future of Harvard College^ by Professor W. W. 
Goodwin, 1891, p. 11. 



138 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

at the present day, but far too much of it is enthusiasm of a 
baser sort. The hero of to-day is the captain of a "team." 
If a man should now be dropped because he ran round the 
Common in five minutes, he would be dropped because a 
lighter-footed rival had run round it in four minutes, fifty-nine 
seconds and four-fifths. On the last Saturday in June I wit- 
nessed the fag-end of the baseball match between Harvard 
and Yale. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, kindliest and, 
I trust, happiest of old men, in his long life has seen many 
revolutions, political, social, literary, and scientific. Has he 
ever sat upon the benches of the lofty stands on this great day 
of the Harvard year? If he has, he would have had to own 
that few revolutions had been more rapid, and none more 
thorough, than that whose effects he was witnessing. Society 
drop a man who should run round the Common in five min- 
utes ! Why, here was society, unprotected by its parasols, for 
three hours enduring the blaze of a New England midsummer 
sun, now carried high upon the wave of triumph, now sunk 
low down in the trough of despair, as victory or defeat alter- 
nately hovered over the nine chosen heroes of Harvard. The 
Autocrat has known and has outlived many famous men. He 
himself was not the least of that group of men — that Satur- 
day Club — which gave Boston a fresh renown. His friends 
were Prescott, Emerson, Motley, Hawthorne, Agassiz, Dana, 
Lowell. What triumph of the most triumphant of these men 
could compare with that in which, on this June afternoon, in 
the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three, 

the immortal Jack H was borne along and aloft by those 

few, those happy few, who had got hold of one of his glorious 
limbs, amid the shouts and the replication of the shouts of 
surrounding thousands? It was indeed a great day. Yale 



VIII. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 139 



had been cat last overcome — Yale, whose long line of victo- 
ries, not only at baseball, but at football and on the river, 
inflicts on Harvard its solitary shame. It had been overcome, 
too, by the mighty strength and the "sage command" of the 

glorious Jack-H , of Jack H , who for many a day, 

like Achilles, had not mingled in the fray. It was no fit of 
the sulks which had restrained his ponderous arm and fettered, 
as it were, his huge leg. It was to fate, not to caprice, that 
he had yielded. For five long weeks he had been " on pro- 
bation." A man gets "on probation" by his devotion to the 
nobler side of university life, and by his spirited neglect of 
his lectures and his lecturers. While he is on it, he is de- 
barred from taking part in all matches with outsiders. A 
blow, it was felt, was impending over the whole Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts, with which the glory of Harvard is 
inseparably bound up; but the stern President did not yield 
to the indignant outcry. There was to be no Rex Siipra- 
grammaiicus in the College, and the hero, if he had not to 
swallow the leek, at all events had to swallow the needful 
amount of knowledge. He did it, and he did it in time. 
His brain, happily, was unaffected by the unwonted strain; all 
that weight of learning he bore lightly as a flower, and his 
unrivalled skill as a pitcher he displayed in its fullest extent. 
The honour of Harvard, of Cambridge, of Boston, and of 
Massachusetts was saved, and the pride of Yale, of New 
Haven, and of Connecticut was laid low. 

The last act in this "swelling pageant" I had, as I have 
said, myself witnessed. "Fag-end," I called it; but when I 
used that word, I but imperfectly recalled to my mind the 
hero and the triumph. My journal has refreshed my memory. 
The following is my record: "On the way to lunch with Pro- 



140 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

fessor , as I passed the entrance to the baseball ground, I 

saw a body of police, twenty-eight in number, marching in to 
keep order. The American policemen are much less stolid- 
looking than our men; they do not seem part of a machine. 
They have been but little drilled. No mischievous under- 
graduate, by thrusting his walking-stick between the feet of 
the front man, could lay low a whole file of them, as a whole 
file was once laid low in the High Street of Oxford. They 
have not the air of men who are ever looking over somebody's 
head. Their appearance is that of, "good householders." 
Falstaff would have pressed them without a moment's hesita- 
tion. Bardolph would speedily have had "four Harry ten 
shillings in French crowns " to set them free. Their work 
must be light, to judge by a certain comfortable rotundity of 
that part of the body which the English policeman confines 
with a belt. Their tunic hangs loosely. " Unbuttoning thee 
after supper " could never be uttered by way of reproach 
against one of them. I had scarcely seen the last of these 
easy-going constables, when there drove up in procession four 
two-horse flies, containing the Yale team, and some of their 
chief supporters. On this fine summer day they came in 
closed carriages, as if they were too delicate to stand the air. 
Such "drags" as I have seen in Oxford I never see here. I 
was late in getting back to the ground, so hard had I found it 
to tear myself away from the good talk of my friend, the most 
cheery of learned Professors. A vast gathering had been fol- 
lowing the changing fortunes of the game for full two hours. 
Round half the field stands had been raised for the reserved 
seats, sloping upwards to the height of nearly twenty feet. 
They all seemed full. The very roofs of the neighbouring 
buildings were crowded, while on the level ground, and up the 



viii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 141 

sloping bank at one end many thousands were massed to- 
gether. A dollar (four shillings and a penny) was more than 
I cared to pay for a seat; for half a dollar I got standing- 
room. The people were orderly and good-humoured, though 
very many, like myself, got but glimpses of the game over the 
heads of those who stood in front. There were not a few 
negroes in the crowd, who elbowed their way like the rest. 
It was surprising to see how many of the working class could 
afford so large a sum as half a dollar for admittance. A com- 
mon labouring- man, however, could earn it by two and a half 
hours' work. 

The game, so far as I could see it, is but a poor one com- 
pared with cricket. It is the old baseball of my boyhood 
expanded and refined. It is almost as much below cricket 
as skittles is below billiards. It is, however, far more easily 
understood and followed by the ordinary spectator. Its alter- 
nations of triumph are sudden. It is not an affair of days, 
but of hours. A match can be played between lunch and 
afternoon tea; but what do these benighted heathen cousins 
of ours know of afternoon tea? As fortune began to incline 
towards Harvard, the din of applause became oppressive. 
The cheering — the "Harvard Yell," as it is called — being 
mechanical, led by conductors, and kept up for many minutes 
together, is tiresome. The undergraduates sat all together, 
massed in rows, one above the other. At the foot of each 
block of seats stood the leader of the cheering, facing the 
spectators, and giving the time by waving both his hands, the 
men responding, not only with their voices but with the move- 
ment of the upper part of the body. The Harvard "yell" 
I have already described. Yale responds with rah nine 
times repeated, but without any pause at the third and sixth 



142 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

repetitions, followed by Yale, also drawn out and in an as- 
cending scale. Even Wellesley, the Ladies' College, has 
its gentle "yell" — W-e-1; 1-e-s; 1-e-y; Wellesley. This 
cheering, it seemed to me, went on all the time some great 
player was in, or else when the fortune was so evenly balanced 
that friends needed encouragement and foes depression. 
It was just as if at a cricket-match the clapping was kept 
up through many "overs" together. Being so mechanical, 
it had none of that exhilarating effect of the loud but brief 
applause at one of our matches after a great hit, which at 
once subsides into a dead silence as the bowler takes the ball 
and prepares to deliver it. It must surely mar the pleasure 
of the lookers-on, and, moreover, unfairly depress the oppo- 
sing nine, who have to play in the continuous din that is raised 
against them. In the slang of the field this is known as "rat- 
tling the team." It is foes, not friends, who are rattled. In 
this match it was, I am told, carried to a height never before 
known, to the great indignation of many of the older men. 
Earlier in the season the Crijnson had mourned over the decay 
of "the old Harvard spirit," due, they maintained, to the 
rapid increase in the number of undergraduates. This spirit 
was one of "gentlemanliness." A Harvard man, it used to be 
said, could never understand "the Yale fondness for pure 
noise." Their understandings must have been a good deal 
enlightened by this match, though perhaps it might be ob- 
jected that the noise was anything but pure, having in end 
victory through intimidation. 

At the end of the game, when Harvard was victorious, the 
crowd rushed to the goal. It was a strange sight this throng, 
till this glorious moment so closely packed, so easily kept in 
by the barrier of a single cord, on a sudden streaming in 



VIII. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 143 



dense masses towards one point. The victors were hoisted 
on men's shoulders and carried round the field at a running 
pace. The hero of the day, borne before all the rest, was 

Jack H , a huge mass of bone, flesh, and muscle, unwieldy 

but immortal. When at length he and his eight great breth- 
ren reached the Pavilion, they went up to the balcony and dis- 
played themselves to the admiring and shouting host below. 
Whether in England, in the yearly matches at cricket and 
football between Oxford and Cambridge, such wild scenes of 
triumph are now to be witnessed I do not know. It is many 
a year since I was a spectator; in the days when Plancus was 
consul there was sobriety at all events in our games. If in 
the idolatry of bodily strength and bodily skill our American 
cousins are carrying craziness beyond even the point to which 
we have advanced it, they are but bettering our instructions. 
Let them remain where they are; in a year or two we shall 
catch them up in the mad race. 

I could wish that at Harvard they had been content to fol- 
low us in our athletic frenzy, and had stopped short of our 
slang. Even the humblest of "the ten leading Universities" 
of some Western State ought to feel degraded should it be 
spoken of and written of as the 'Varsity. Thirty-five years 
ago in Oxford this vile pronunciation was confined to the 
men who hung about the cricket-grounds and the College 
barges, ready to pick up a chance sixpence by rendering 
some trifling service, or to drink a gentleman's health without 
rendering any service at all. Even a junior scout would have 
disdained to use it. From these idlers it passed to the 
cricketers and boating-men, and so gradually onwards to the 
whole body of undergraduates. Now it is familiar as a house- 
hold word in the mouths of Fellows of Colleges and Tutors. 



144 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Grave Proctors have not been kept by the velvet sleeves of their 
gowns and their dignity from employing it, and from the 
lips of Professors in their lighter moods it occasionally drops 
when they wish to show that they are not unacquainted with 
the modes of the modern world. Major Pendennis caught 
from the young men the fashion of speaking of his card as 
his "pasteboard." Degradation has not as yet spread so far 
as this at Harvard. No Professor, no Assistant Professor, I 
verily believe, has as yet lost so much of "the old Harvard 
spirit " as to call his beloved Alma Mater the 'Varsity. 

Matches are regulated by the governing bodies in Harvard 
in a way which is altogether unknown in Oxford. There the 
control, such as it is, is exercised by each College. The 
University, beyond giving over part of the Parks to the cricket 
and football clubs, knows nothing of games. At Harvard, up 
to the year 1882, there had been but one restriction imposed 
on the athletes. No match or race could take place till after 
the last recitation^ hour on Saturday (one o'clock), or after 
four o'clock on other days. This rule shows how great is the 
difference in the daily life of the two Universities. At Oxford 
the common hours for exercise are between half-past one and 
half -past four. In the winter half of the year, by four o'clock 
or a little later all the games at football are over, and men 
stream homewards from the Parks, in all the glory of mud 
and sweat, not yielding the path to any. About the same 
time the boating-men are flocking in from the river. In 
summer, when there is no match, the cricketers return by half- 
past four. They all come back in time to change their 

1 That which we call a college lecture, that is to say, a class taken by a 
college tutor, as distinguished from a public lecture delivered by a uni- 
versity professor, is at Harvard known as a recitation. 



VIII. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 145 



clothes and take a cup of tea before the reading-men get to 
work with their tutors. This kind of work goes on till nearly 
seven — the general hour for dinner — and is often resumed 
after a two hours' interval. In my time at Oxford, " the 
rather luxurious practice," with which President Eliot charges 
the Law School, " of using for lectures chiefly the hours from 
nine to one," ^ was, I believe, very general. With the stroke 
of one we had done with lecturing and the tutors had done 
with us — the rest of the day was ours, to dispose of as we 
pleased. I remember the kind of shock it gave me when, on 
a visit to Oxford, two or three years after I had taken my 
degree, calling in the evening on a young and zealous tutor I 
found him engaged with a small class of reading-men. There 
used to be, and no doubt there still is, a great difference, not 
only among different Colleges, but among the tutors of the 
same College, in the strictness with which attendance at lect- 
ures is enforced. One of my tutors, who was described in 
the Cricketers' Guide as "the remains of a fine player," was 
full of indulgence when a match was coming off. As Master 
of the College, he still kept up his interest in games. The 
last time I saw him was one day in the late autumn when he 
was drawn in his Bath Chair to the Football Field. A great 
match was to be played, and though he had nearly reached 
the limit of fourscore years, he would not miss it. A pleasant 
story is told of the kind old man which shows the tact with 
which he governed the undergraduates. The College boat was 
one year at the head of the river. The eight, in their pride 
at seeing one of the smallest of the Colleges in this great posi- 
tion, invited the University crew to dine with them in Hall. 

1 Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College^ 
1891-92, p. 25. 
L 



146 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

There is a limit in the cost of the dinner beyond which no 
one is allowed to go. This they would have exceeded by the 
haunch of venison which they ordered. The manciple, not 
caring to face the wrath of headstrong youth, instead of refu- 
sing to provide it, consulted the Master. He sent for the Cap- 
tain of the Eight, and told him that by a regulation of the 
College which was not to be set aside, the venison could not 
be had. As the young man, full of vexation, was leaving the 
room, the old man called him back. "You are going," he 
said, " to entertain the University crew. It is a great day for 
you and the College, and I am sorry that any of our regula- 
tions, excellent though they may be in themselves, should 
stand in your way. I think I see a way out of the difficulty. 
There is no rule of the College which forbids the Master to 
ask you to accept a haunch of venison, and I shall have great 
pleasure in sending one for you and your friends." 

In Harvard, in the spring of 1882, one of the Professors, 
who had none of the tastes of my old Master, drew the atten- 
tion of the Faculty to the list of matches of the Baseball Club 
for the coming season. Out of twenty-eight, nineteen were to 
be played away from Cambridge. "Could the members of 
the teams," he indignantly asked, "be said to be fulfilling 
the purpose for which they came to College?" A Standing 
Committee on the Regulation of Athletic Sports was ap- 
pointed. It was composed of three members, all of the Fa- 
culty. They had the good sense to begin their work by taking 
the leading athletes into their counsels. "The attitude of the 
young men was one of friendly tolerance. They evidently 
feared that in the main the Members of the Committee 
were practically too inexpert to be safely intrusted with legis- 
lation on such important matters. . . . The Faculty received 



VIII. * HARVARD COLLEGE. 147 

from them a remonstrance, in which it was skilfully but 
clearly intimated that they should hesitate to pass laws in 
regard to a game which they did not understand. Ihis gave 
rise to the celebrated mot of one of the older members, a man 
of gentle spirit but then thoroughly roused, who said that he 
and his colleagues, it was true, might not know when the 
ball was kicked properly, but they certainly did know when a 
man was kicked improperly. The game was at this time 
notoriously rough. During this discussion a new definition 
of the Rugby game was given by a Cambridge wit. ^ The 
games,' she said, 'in which they carry the ball and kick one 
another.' " 

After the first Committee had sat for three years, its place 
was taken by a second composed of five members, two of 
whom were undergraduates. All five were selected by the 
President of the University. Like its predecessor, " it regu- 
lated athletic contests as friends and not as enemies. Mean- 
while trouble was brewing in a new and unexpected quarter." 
The Board of Overseers took alarm "at the abuses, excesses, 
and accidents incident to athletic exercises. In 1886-87 
there had been, on the average, more than one intercollegiate 
contest each week of the College year." The elderly men 
who sat on the Board looked back to those uncontentious 
days, when the annual boat-race with Yale alone disturbed the 
smooth current of university life. The race with Oxford, 
which in the summer of 1869 lined the banks of the Thames 
with a dense crowd, being rowed in the Long Vacation, was 
not an exception. " I did not expect our crew to win," wrote 
Lowell to the author of Tom Brown, " though I hoped they 
would. Especially I hoped it because I thought it would do 
more towards bringing about a more friendly feeling between 



148 HARVARD COLLEGE. 



CHAP. 



the two countries than anything else. I am glad to think 
that it has had that result as it is." ^ I watched the race from 
a point about half-way along the course. The Harvard boat 
was leading by nearly half a length. The result we did not 
learn till the umpire's steamer came down the river with the 
Oxford flag flying at the top. Some minutes before the news 
of victory reached us the result was known in all the chief 
cities of the United States. 

The alarm of the Overseers in 1888 led to the appointment 
of a newly modelled Committee. It consisted of three mem- 
bers of the Faculty and three graduates of the College, ap- 
pointed by the President and Fellows with the consent of the 
Overseers, and of three undergraduates chosen by indirect 
election. It is subject to the authority of the Faculty; but 
during the last four years this authority has not once been 
exercised. Saturday, as far as possible, has been made the 
day for all kinds of contests. On no other day of the week 
can any take place outside Cambridge, " unless permission is 
first obtained from the Committee in writing." Articles of 
agreement have been drawn up by it between Harvard and 
Yale, by which a dishonest practice is stopped which had 
crept into some of the contests. In the eagerness for victory, 
" men who were not bona fide students and who were not 
amateurs" had been taken into the "teams," Harvard and 
Yale agreed that henceforth no one should be allowed to play 
who had ever engaged for money in any athletic competition. 
By another rule, intercollegiate matches have almost wholly 
been confined to New England. As Massachusetts, one only 
of the six New England States, is one hundred and sixty 
miles long and one hundred broad, the confinement does not 

^Letters of J. R. Lowell, ed. 1893, H. 46. 



VIII. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 149 

seem excessive. President Eliot, in his Repof^t to the Board 
of Oversee fs for last year, points out the evils which arise 
when the match takes place near one of the great towns. 
"The public interest in baseball and football has made it easy 
to collect large sums of gate-money, both on College grounds 
and on public grounds convenient to New York and other 
cities. The money thus easily got is often wastefully and 
ineffectively spent. There is something exquisitely inappro- 
priate in the extravagant expenditure on athletic sports at such 
institutions as Harvard and Yale — institutions which have 
been painfully built up by the self-denial, frugality, and pub- 
lic spirit of generations that certainly did not lack physical 
and moral courage, endurance, and toughness, yet always put 
the things of the spirit above the things of sense. At these 
Universities there must be constant economy and inadequacy 
in expenditure for intellectual and spiritual objects; how re- 
pulsive then must be foolish and pernicious expenditures on 
sports." ^ This collection of gate-money on College grounds as 
surely admits of an easy remedy as it needs one. The charge 
of a dollar for a seat at the baseball match seems to me exces- 
sive; but this was surpassed at the football match played last 
year between Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania on 
Thanksgiving Day, when the lowest price for a seat was a 
dollar and a half (six shillings and two pence), while so much 
as two dollars and even two dollars and a half was charged. 
In Oxford almost all the matches, both of cricket and foot- 
ball, are played in the University Parks, which are open to all, 
gown and town alike. There, without any payment, I have 
watched even the great Grace play — that summer hero, per- 
haps the most famous man in England from May till August. 

1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 14. 



150 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

In the remaining eight months he and his fame hibernate. 
New playing-fields are shortly to be opened at Harvard. They 
should be kept pure from this contamination of gate-money. 
"It is not," to quote the President's words, "an appropriate 
function for a College or University to provide periodical 
entertainments during term-time for multitudes of people 
who are not students."^ These multitudes would not attend 
if, as in the Parks at Oxford, the spectators had nothing but 
standing-room provided, and that free of charge. It is the 
high prices which make the spectacle fashionable. 

In the last ten years the four great sports, baseball, boating, 
football, and athletics, have grown so fast " that undergradu- 
ates are now unable single-handed to manage them success- 
fully." To "assume the ofifice of intimate advisers to the 
officers of each of the athletic organizations " was more than 
the Committee chose to do. They proposed that a permanent 
Graduate Advisory Committee should be appointed by each 
association, composed of three graduates "who in their own 
College days had been leaders in athletics." The plan was 
approved of by the undergraduates, and the Committees have 
been established. 

The training of the athletes has not been neglected by the 
President and the Fellows. So early as 1883 the Committee 
on Athletics " recommended that there should be attached to 
the staff of the Gymnasium a person of good education and 
breeding, with the qualifications requisite to enable him to 
advise students as to the best modes of training and practice 
in Track Athletics and Field Sports."'-^ The following year 

1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 12. 

2 The word Field Sports at Harvard does not mean " the diversions of the 
field, as of fowling, hunting, fishing" (to use Johnson's definition). It 
means, I think, such exercises as jumping, leaping, etc. 




if] 

< 

< 
UJ 

I 

UJ 
X 
H 



• •/'Jta^i. 



VIII. ♦ HARVARD COLLEGE. 151 

an Assistant in the Department of Physical Training was 
accordingly appointed. " He is an officer of the College and 
is paid from its funds. Under his skilful training Harvard 
has had teams which have met with only two defeats in the 
intercollegiate contests with Yale in Track Athletics and Field 
Sports." Nothing better shows the strong hold that races 
and matches have taken of Young America than an offer made 
three years ago by some graduates of Harvard of " ten thou- 
sand dollars to be paid to Mr. Bancroft, who was then engaged 
in the practice of his profession in Boston, for three years' 
service as coach simply of the University and Freshman crews." 
The offer was declined by the officers of the Boat Club — why, 
we are not told.-^ 

T have often thought, in walking by the river at Oxford and 
watching the training of the crews, that the labour they under- 
went, the strictness of the discipline to which they were ex- 
posed, and the abuse which they had to suffer in silence, 
made the life of a boating-man harder than that of a young 
soldier, and almost as hard as the criminal's on the treadmill. 
But their lot is freedom itself when measured by the standard 
of Harvard and Yale. They breathe, at all events, the air of 
heaven, and are not made, during the winter months, to tug at 
the labouring oar in a dismal vault. In the long frosts of 
New England the rivers are frozen hard and boating becomes 
impossible. At such times the crews are exercised in a great 
tank, covered in and kept unfrozen by the heat of a furnace. 
There, under the eye of their trainer, they pull their oars 

1 These facts I have extracted from an article entitled The Committee on 
Athletics, published in the Harvard Graduates^ Magazine for January, 1893. 
In the number for March, 1894, it is stated thus: "Thousands of dollars 
are now paid for the services and expenses of graduate * coaches.' " 



152 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

through the water without moving the boat, for it is fastened 
to the side. Had Dante seen them at work, he would have 
added one more torment to his Hell. 

President Eliot in his Report ^ deals at some length with 
the great and rapidly growing evil of this excessive devotion 
to athletic sports. He is fully aware of the good that has 
been done by the growth of manly exercises in American 
Colleges. "There has been," he says, "a decided improve- 
ment in the average health and strength of Harvard students 
during the last twenty-five years." "Athletic sports," he adds, 
"have supplied a new and effective motive for resisting all 
sins which weaken or corrupt the body; they have quickened 
admiration for such manly qualities as courage, fortitude, and 
presence of mind in emergencies and under difficulties; they 
have cultivated in a few the habit of command, and in many 
the habit of quick obedience and intelligent subordination; 
and finally, they have set before young men prizes and dis- 
tinctions which are uncontaminated by any commercial value, 
and which no one can win who does not possess much pa- 
tience, perseverance, and self-control, in addition to rare 
bodily endowments." But, on the other hand, carried as they 
so often are to excess, they do not " permit the main end of 
College life — hard study. No student can keep up his 
studies, and also play his full part in any one of these sports 
as at present conducted. The faithful member of a crew or 
team may, perhaps, manage to attend most of his lectures 
or other College exercises; but he rarely has any mind to 
give to his studies." As I read this passage I called to mind 
how nearly forty years ago one of my tutors at Oxford pointed 
out to me — not that any pointing out was needful — the 

1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, pp. 12-22. 



VIII. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 153 



drowsy state in which a great oarsman — the chief glory of 
our College — always came to lectures. Over his Greek and 
Latin he rested from the real labours of the day. He was as 
sleepy over his book as he was wakeful over his oar. His 
vast muscles seemed to have invaded his brain. "Wantonly 
exaggerated athletic sports," continues the President, "con- 
vert the student into a powerful animal, and dull for the time 
his intellectual parts; they present the Colleges to the public, 
educated and uneducated, as places of mere physical sport, 
and not of intellectual training; they make familiar to the 
student a coarse publicity which destroys his rightful privacy 
while in training for intellectual service, and subjects him to 
insolent and vulgar comments on his personal qualities; they 
induce in masses of spectators at interesting games an hysteri- 
cal excitement which too many Americans enjoy, but which 
is evidence, not of physical strength and depth of passion, 
but of feebleness and shallowness; and they tend to dwarf 
mental and moral pre-eminence by unduly magnifying physi- 
cal prowess.." 

In Harvard Stories there is set before us this scene of 
"hysterical excitement." The football match with Yale is 
described, where the friends and supporters of each Univer- 
sity muster nearly ten thousand strong, among them "Gov- 
ernors, Congressmen, Judges, Architects, and Clergymen." 
After a long struggle, the ball is at length carried over the 
Yale line. " Then did all the Harvard hosts shout with a 
mighty shout that made the air tremble. For five minutes 
dignified men, old and young, cheered and hugged each other, 
and acted as they never do on any other occasion, except, 
perhaps, a College boat-race."^ 

1 Harvard Stories, by W. K. Post, 1893, p. 23. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Caps and Gowns. — Harvard College and University. — The Dormitories. 
— Room Rents. — Students' Life Seventy Years Ago. — Memorial Hall. 

THE Harvard men in their imitation of the Enghsh uni- 
versities are doing better in their attempt to introduce 
the cap and gown. In America, repubUcan simplicity has 
gone too far in abohshing state and in discarding robes. 
Nowhere but in the Supreme Court at Washington is so much 
even as a gown worn by the Judges. Barristers everywhere are 
robeless and wigless. Yet, if " robes and furred gowns hide 
all," in the courts of more than one City and perhaps of more 
than one State the temptation to wear them must surely some- 
times be very strong. In New York, in no remote antiquity, 
there have been Judges known who, it might have been ex- 
pected, would have kept them on term time and vacation, day 
and night. Among all the Bishops of the Episcopal Church, 
I am told, there is but one apron and but one pair of gaiters 
to be seen. What are they among sixty millions of people ? 
In Appleton Chapel at Harvard, where every Sunday evening 
the university sermon is preached, no seats are set apart for the 
Professors. The President even elbows in his way with the 
rest, and takes a place wherever he may find one unoccupied. 

He and the immortal Jack H , if that hero ever brings 

down his mighty soul to the low level of a sermon, might sit 
shoulder to shoulder. On the evening when I attended the 

154 



CHAP. IX. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 155 



service, I chanced to sit just behind a dignitary of the Univer- 
sity. When, on standing up for the opening hymn, I discovered 
that he was wearing a dark grey coat and a pair of brown shoes, 
and when I thought of our Vice-Chancellor in the red and 
black gown of a Doctor of Divinity, or in the crimson gown of 
a Doctor of Civil Law, marshalled to his chair of state by the 
Bedells with their silver maces, and supported by the long line 
of Doctors, Proctors, and Heads of Houses in their gowns 
and hoods, the organ pealing forth, and the whole congregation 
— Masters, Bachelors, and undergraduates — rising to do them 
honour, my mind was greatly troubled. Lost in thought, it was 
some time before I could give my attention to the preacher. 

The need of ceremony is gradually becoming felt. On Com- 
mencement Day, when all the degrees of the year are given, the 
gown has for some while been commonly worn by " the Graduat- 
ing Class." On this great day, and on this alone, the President 
and the Professors wear their gowns. The bright adornment 
of the hood was for the most part wanting. Nevertheless, on 
the shoulders of a great classical scholar, over his Harvard 
gown, I saw the blue hood of a Doctor of Laws of Edinburgh ; 
and on the shoulders of one of the youngest of the Professors, 
the red and black hood of a Master of Arts of Oxford. Some 
fifty or sixty years ago, Professor Ticknor — so the story runs — 
brought back from Oxford, where he had received an honorary 
degree, a gown which w^as, he said, that of a Doctor of Civil 
Law. This he wore at Harvard on solemn occasions. On re- 
signing his professorship, he bequeathed it to Longfellow, who 
succeeded him in his chair, who in his turn wore it, and in his 
turn, on his resignation, bequeathed it to his successor Lowell. 
In its faded glories the author of the Bighw Papers delivered 
his opening address, troubled though he was by a doubt that it 



156 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

was not really the gown of a Doctor of Oxford. In the year 
1873, when Oxford conferred on him an honorary degree, 
he looked round the Sheldonian Theatre for a robe of the 
same kind as his venerable relique. After a long search he 
discovered a single specimen. It was, he was told, the gown 
of an Archdeacon ! 

Prescott, if in his later years he was ever present on Com- 
mencement Day, must, I should think, have worn the Doctor's 
gown which was conferreel on him at Oxford. " He had," says 
his biographer, " already received more than one honorary 
degree at home ; but, with his accustomed ingenuousness and 
simplicity, remembering how lavishly and carelessly such dis- 
tinctions are conferred by most of our American Colleges, he 
could not repress his satisfaction that he was " now a real 
Doctor."^ 

The square cap has been but lately introduced — not, I 
believe, before the summer of 1892. Till then the tall silk hat 
had been always worn with the gown. Nowhere is this hat 
much seen in New England. In the streets of Boston I doubt 
whether it is worn by one man in a hundred. It is not there, 
as it is in the city of London and in the Temple and Lincoln's 
Inn, the very badge of commercial and professional respecta- 
bility. Neither is it seen on the broad Avenues to the west of 
Boston, where are the houses of the fashionable world. On 
Sunday, however, I am told, before and after church it is com- 
monly worn by highly respectable people. For Commence- 
ment the graduating Bachelor bought one for the first and last 
time, k young man of a frugal mind was content with hiring 
one for the day. At Oxford the gown of the honorary Doctor 
is, in like manner, commonly hired, and perhaps sometimes 

^ Life of JV. H. P}'cscoti, by George Tick nor, p. 293. 



IX. , HARVARD COLLEGE. 157 

the cap. In the Crimson, a little while before the great day of 
last year, " a Member of the Graduating Class who loves con- 
gruities " complained of " the incongruity of the action when the 
Seniors removed their caps in entering the auditorium of 
Sanders Theatre. It jarred a little upon one's sense of fitness. 
The cap, indeed, is not a hat to be removed during exercises, 
but on the contrary to be worn. In Cambridge and Oxford 
its place is thus understood. The unique effect of both is quite 
lost when one is taken away ; especially when the cap is of the 
peculiar form." The unique effect of a large body of under- 
graduates wearing their caps on Degree Day in the presence of 
the President — the Vice-Chancellor, that is to say, and more 
than the Vice-Chancellor — of this American University, was 
prevented by a letter from a better informed correspondent. 

Americans, like all other foreigners, do not easily understand 
the mixed government of Oxford and Cambridge, each with its 
numerous Colleges, self-governing and independent corpora- 
tions, and its one University. In the Crimson, in an article 
headed The Oxford Student, I find it stated that " no Oxford 
student is allowed to enter or leave the University after nine 
o'clock. The gates are shut at that time." An Oxford man, of 
course, enters the University on the day he matriculates, and 
leaves it when he goes out of residence. Many never leave 
it till they leave life. It is no more capable of having gates 
than a Federal Government, or any other metaphysical body. 
In the New England Cambridge, College and University seemed 
to me interchangeable terms. For instance, in Professor Good- 
win's Present and Future of Harvai'd College, though the learned 
author mainly considers the Arts Course, the Course, that is to 
say, which has its seat in the College, nevertheless he also deals 
with the whole system of a University. No one, so far as I 



]58 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

heard, speaks of Harvard University, but always of Harvard 
College. It was not till I turned over the pages of the Cata- 
logue^ that I discovered the difference. " Harvard University," 
as there I read, " comprehends the following departments : 
Harvard College, the Lawrence Scientific School, the Graduate 
School, the Divinity School, the Law School, the Medical School, 
the Dental School, the School of Veterinary Medicine, the Bussey 
Institute (a School of Agriculture), the Arnold Arboretum, the 
University Library, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the 
University Museum, the Botanic Garden, the Herbarium, and 
the Astronomical Observatory." The President of the College 
is the President of every Faculty and President of the whole 
University. The Professors of the College are Professors of the 
University, but not all the Professors of the University are Pro- 
fessors of the College. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
for instance, is Emeritus Professor not of Harvard College, but 
of Harvard University. The accomplished editor of Loivelts 
Lettei'S is a Professor of Harvard College and also of Harvard 
University. It was, writes Mr. W. R. Thayer, "the Presidency 
of Kirkland," who held office from 1810 to 1829, "that wit- 
nessed the expansion of Harvard from a College into a Uni- 
versity by the creation of several departments or schools, in 
addition to the Academic department." Mr. Thayer never- 
theless entitles his work, An Historical Sketch of Ha^-vard 
University fi'om its Foundation to May, i8go. He thus seems 
to confuse the University with the College, going back for 
its foundation nearly two centuries before, according to his 
statement, it was created. Harvard, however, in the ordinary 
sense of the word was a University from the beginning, for it 
has always been a corporate body giving instruction in " polite 

1 The Calendar of the University. 



IX. . HARVARD COLLEGE. 159 

learning," and conferring degrees. So early as 1657, in Afi 
Appendix to the College Charter, I find it stated that " the Corpo- 
ration and the Body of Overseers remain to the present time 
the governing powers of the University." Up to the time then 
that the new Schools were added, somewhat early in this century, 
the College was the University and the University was the 
College. Its founders, who were mainly graduates of our Eng- 
lish Cambridge, had hoped, we may feel sure, that as wealth 
increased, pious founders would arise, by whose munificence 
new Colleges would cluster round Harvard, as they had clus- 
tered round the earhest foundations in 'the old country, each 
a corporation in itself, and all forming one great University. 
Here, as the years went by, should some wanderer come from 
the banks of the English Cam, he would, they dreamt, in very 

truth find 

*' Parvam Trojam, simulataque magnis 
Pergama." 

If such were their hopes and such their dreams, these hopes 
and these dreams have this very year in part come true ; but 
in a way which would have startled these old Puritans, if not 
dismayed them. By a vote of the Governing Bodies of Har- 
vard University and by an Act of the Legislature, an institu- 
tion in Cambridge in which women students have for some 
years received an academical education, has been united to 
the University, while it still remains an independent corpora- 
tion. Radcliffe College, the college, of the "sweet girl-grad- 
uates," is the second founded in the American Cambridge. 
May it not be the last ! 

Till this year the University had followed a course of its 
own. Of the new "Departments" which had gathered round 
it, the Divinity School alone bears any likeness to one of our 



160 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Colleges. Like them it has its Chapel, Library, and rooms 
for residence, but it has no separate Corporation, no common 
kitchen and no common dining-hall. The students, who are 
scarcely forty in number, board where they please. They are 
all Bachelors of Arts of Harva-rd or of some other University, 
or graduates of a Theological School. The members of the 
Lawrence Scientific School can have rooms in College. The 
students in the Law School have only the privilege, shared in 
by all the Departments, of having their meals in Memorial 
Hall. For their instruction they have indeed a stately Hall 
and a noble Library. The Graduate School, as its name im- 
plies, is composed of men who have already taken their degree. 
They have no local habitation. The three Medical Schools are 
situated in Boston, three miles or so from Cambridge. These 
students live in lodgings. The School of Agriculture is on a 
farm. There is, therefore, excluding Divinity Hall, but one 
College in Harvard in the Oxford and Cambridge sense of 
the word. 

To the Americans, our peculiar Academic system can be 
made clearer than to the French or Germans by Professor 
Freeman's ingenious comparison of their forty-two States, each 
self-governed, but held together by a Federal Government.^ 
They are familiar, moreover, with the notion of students re- 
siding in collegiate buildings, under a discipline more or less 
strict. " Harvard," writes Professor Goodwin, " began as an 

1 Milman, in his LListory of I^atin Christianity, ed. 1858, Vol. VI., 
p. 102, writing of the time of Wyclifife, says: "The English Universities 
had already begun to take their peculiar character, a league, as it were, of 
separate, independent Colleges, each a distinct republic, with its endow- 
ments, statutes, internal government; though the University was still para- 
mount, and the Chancellor, with his inferior officers, held the supreme, 
all-embracing authority." 



IX. • HARVARD COLLEGE. 161 

English college of the Cambridge type, and it remained essen- 
tially an English college down to the early years of this cen- 
tury. ... It has always had the traditional freedom of an 
English college, and none of the smaller discipline of a Ger- 
man gymnasium ; but it has never had any of the very different 
freedom of a German university." ^ More than half of the 
students of the College live in great blocks of buildings known 
as Dormitories, mostly standing in the Yard. These Dormi- 
tories may be likened to the different quadrangles of a large 
Oxford College, such as Christ Church, or, better still, to the 
New Buildings of Magdalen — still known as New, though it 
was in that " stately pile " that Gibbon had his rooms. Each 
Dormitory stands apart. Round the Yard there is no lofty 
enclosure with its single gateway, its great doors thrown open 
in the daytime and closed after dark, its Httle wicket, and 
its porter's lodge. There is, to be sure, at the main entrance 
a gateway of fine proportions, built a few years ago by a former 
student, but it stands there for state, not for use. The Yard is 
almost everywhere enclosed by nothing more than a low rail- 
ing, with numerous openings. Undergraduates can leave their 
rooms and return to them at all hours. Nodes atque dies 
patet janua. There is no "gateing" here.- 

The twelve Dormitories of the College " have accommoda- 
tions for 973 students, provided all double rooms are occupied 
by two persons." In the oldest buildings the occupant has but 
a single room, in which he lives by day and sleeps by night. 
Many of the apartments consist of one sitting-room and two 
bed-rooms. Two students often join together in taking one of 

1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 2i. 

2 At Oxford an undergraduate is said to be gated when he is forbidden 
to leave the College after the dinner hour. 

M 



162 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

these, for the expense of the sitting-room is shared. " I shall 
chum next year with Dorr," wrote Emerson, " and he appears 
to be perfectly disposed to study hard." ^ Chumming was of 
old common enough in Oxford ; the evidences of it were left 
less than forty years ago. When I entered Pembroke Col- 
lege in 1855, there did not happen to be a set of rooms vacant. 
By a University statute an undergraduate was at that time re- 
quired to sleep within his College during his first three years of 
residence. Another Freshman and I had each to find a sitting- 
room in a neighbouring street. For a bedroom I had to 
choose between " a double room," or a hole under a staircase 
which was commonly used as a '' scout's " pantry. With an 
EngHshman's love of independence, I chose the pantry. In 
Harvard it often happens that a double room has but a single 
tenant, when it is occupied by a student who is rich enough to 
pay the full rent. The rents range from $25 (^5.2.0) to $350 
(;^7i.io) a year. There are, however, only eighteen rooms for 
which the charge is so low as $56 (^11.9.0).- In the Oxford 
Colleges the lowest rent is ^4 ($19.56). At Oriel the average 
is;^ii ($53.80) ; at New College, ^14 ($68.46) ; at Balliol, 
^15 ($73.35). In Christ Church the lowest rent is ;£"8 
($39.12), and the highest ^^28 ($137). In Magdalen, even 
in Gibbon's "stately pile," not more than ;^20 ($98) is 
charged ; in the other Colleges the rents are below this sum. 
In Harvard 292 rooms are rented more highly than the dearest 

1 Emersoti in Concord, ed. 1889, p. 23. 

2 " The occupants of the only low-priced rooms in the College Yard 
dormitories received in March the following notice : ' By vote of the 
Corporation, February 26, 1894, the scale of prices of rooms in Hollis and 
Stoughton is to be increased from the beginning of the academic year 
1894-95.' The new rates are from 50 to 75 per cent, higher than the 
old." Harvard Graduates'' Magazine, June, 1894, p. 604, 



IX. . HARVARD COLLEGE. 163 

in Oxford. As a considerable set-off against this higher charge, 
the residence is longer by eleven weeks in each year. 

In Oxford, when I was an undergraduate, the furniture was 
always the property of the occupant, who took it, or as much 
of it as he pleased, at a valuation from his predecessor. What- 
ever additions he made were in like manner valued. For the 
furniture of my rooms, which were in the Attics, I was charged 
on entrance about ^14 (^68.50). I laid out ^4 (^19.56), 
and received on leaving nearly as much as I had paid at first. 
At the present time in many Colleges the furniture is owned 
by the Corporation, who charge for it in a higher rent. In 
Harvard the rooms are let unfurnished. Professor Peabody, 
in his lively Reminiscences^ thus describes the furniture as he 
had known it nearly seventy years ago : " In my time a 
student's room was remarkable chiefly for what it did not 
have — for the absence, I might almost say, of all tokens of 
civilization. The feather-bed was regarded as a valuable 
chattel; but ten dollars [;2{^2.i] would have been a fair auc- 
tion-price for all the other contents of an average room. I 
doubt whether any fellow-students of mine owned a carpet. A 
second-hand dealer had a few threadbare carpets, which he 
leased at an extravagant price to certain Southern members of 
the Senior Class. The rooms were heated by open wood-fires. 
Almost every room had among its trans tni tie nda a cannon-ball, 
which on very cold days was heated to a red heat, and placed 
on a skillet ; while at other times it was often utilized by being 
rolled down stairs at such times as might most nearly bisect a 
tutor's night-sleep." ^ 

The late Master of my College, who died less than three 
years ago, told me that, when he was a Junior Fellow, the 

^Reminiscences of Harvard College, p. 196. 



164 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

floor of the Common Room, which was carpetless, was 
sprinkled with fine sand every morning. An ancient Fellow of 
Exeter College, who is still remembered by one or two of the 
Seniors, angrily resisted the proposal to introduce a carpet into 
their Common Room. If one were laid down, he said, he 
would never set foot on it. It was laid down, and he kept to 
his word. 

Mr. Frank Bolles, late Secretary of Harvard University, 
whose untimely death is greatly deplored, recently published a 
curious collection of letters from forty students of the College, 
— all " very poor, earnest, scholarly, eager to secure remunera- 
tive work, and likely to be methodical and accurate in money 
matters," in which " are described in detail their necessary ex- 
penses."^ Some of these men lived in furnished lodgings; 
others have not separated their room-rent from their outlay for 
furniture. In the sixteen letters where the charges are kept 
apart, the lowest expenditure in a year on furniture was ^5 
(^1.0.5); the highest ^48 (^9.16.0); the average being 
^20 (;^4.i.8). Some of this outlay would, no doubt, be re- 
covered by each student as he went out of residence, but the 
sale is not managed by the College as it is at Oxford. There 
is no transference from the out-going to the in-coming tenant. 
Every man before leaving sells his furniture as best he can, 
piece by piece. It sometimes happens that a rich student, 
in all the carelessness which comes from a full purse, leaves his 
furniture behind as a present to his fortunate but unknown 
successor. 

A Loan-Furniture Association has lately beeii, founded, 
" which lends students sets of furniture at a price just sufficient 
to replace the property as it is worn out. The charge for a 

1 Students^ Expenses, by Frank Bolles, 1893, P- 9- 



IX. HARVARD COLLEGE. 165 

set is $5 (^1.0.5) a year." It is managed by a Board of 
Directors chosen by ballot from among the officers and stu- 
dents of the University.^ 

The students who do not "room" in College — to use a 
word in common use in America — reside in "private Dormi- 
tories," in boarding-houses, in private families, or in ordinary 
lodgings. The University Committee on the Reception of 
Students, at the opening of each year, publishes a descriptive 
list of rooms to let, with the rents asked for the academic year. 
"This grouping of facts and figures," writes the Secretary, 
" has tended to establish uniformity and stability in rates. By 
covering a large residence area, the list has extended competi- 
tion and made rates more moderate than they might otherwise 
have been." " The following entries which I have selected from 
this Hst show both the character of the lodgings and the fulness 
of the information : — 

*' Rent ^50 [;^io,4.6], one-eighth of a mile from the College, one room 
on the fourth flour [the third according to our reckoning, for in America the 
ground floor is the first], twelve feet by eleven, with one window to the 
south, furnished; stove; light; fuel not provided; no bath-room." 

" Rent $200 [;^40.i8.o], suite of two rooms on the second floor, one six- 
teen feet and a half square, the other sixteen by eleven, with four win- 
dows to the south and west, unfurnished; stove ; no fuel or light." 

" Rent ^500 [;^ 1 02.4.0] , half a mile from the College ; suite of two rooms 
on the second floor, one twelve feet by fourteen, the other eleven feet by 
thirteen, with five windows to the north and west; stove; bath-room; 
no fuel or hght." 

Many of the lodgings consist of only one room. In Oxford, 
in the lodgings licensed by the University, in which alone under- 
graduates are allowed to lodge, a separate bedroom must be 

1 Students' Expenses, p. 5 ; LLarvard University, by Frank Bolles, p. 5. 
^ Students' Expenses, p. 5. 



166 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

provided. It is, however, sometimes little better than a closet. 
*' Good order is maintained in College and private Dormitories 
by graduates or instructors holding appointments as Proctors. 
Proctors are under the direction of the Regent. At the dis- 
cretion of the Regent, a Proctor may be placed in any private 
house where students lodge, if the maintenance of good order 
in the house seems to require it." ^ This is a heavy, though a 
just tax on the householder, who has to provide a room for 
the Proctor free of charge. A studious set of men living in 
College have been known to ask that a more rigorous Proctor 
might be sent to reside on their staircase. 

The students board where they please. There is no buttery- 
hatch or kitchen-hatch, whence breakfasts, lunches, and suppers 
are sent out to men's rooms. They had both existed in old 
days, for they were not among the institutions from which the 
Puritans had fled, who, with all their strictness, were by no 
means careless of the creature comforts. In the early days 
each student ''received his sizing of food upon a pewter plate 
and his beer in a pewter mug. They were delivered by the 
butler to the servitors," who would carry them into the Hall.^ 
The buttery-hatch fell first. In the first year of this century it 
was closed forever. The kitchen-hatch struggled on for a few 
years longer, but it, too, was at length closed. " Commons," 
the meals provided by the College and eaten in the Hall, 
continued till 1849.^ Professor Peabody gives the following 

1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 5. *' The Regent is a University 
officer who exercises a general supervision over the conduct and welfare of 
the students." Catalogue, p. 32. 

2 The Early College Buildings at Ca-mbridge, by A. M. Davis, p. 22. 

3 An Llistorical Sketch of Harvard University, by W. R. Thayer, 1 890, 
p. 42. 



IX. , HARVARD COLLEGE. 167 

description of a student's fare and daily life, as he had known 
it seventy years ago : — 

" The student's life was hard. Morning prayers were in sum- 
mer at six ; ^ in winter about half an hour before sunrise, in a 
bitterly cold chapel. Thence half of each Class passed into 
the several recitation-rooms, and three-quarters of an hour 
later the bell rang for a second set of recitations, including the 
remaining half of the students. Then came breakfast, which, 
in the College Commons, consisted solely of coffee, hot rolls 
and butter, except when the members of a mess had succeeded 
in pinning to the nether surface of the table, by a two-pronged 
fork, some slices of meat from the previous day's dinner^ Be- 
tween ten and twelve every student attended another recitation 
or a lecture. Dinner was at half-past twelve. There was another 
recitation in the afternoon, except on Saturdays ; then evening 
prayers at six, or in winter at early twilight ; then the evening 
meal, plain as the breakfast, with tea instead of coffee, and 
cold bread for the hot rolls. After tea the Dormitories rang 
with song and merriment till the study-bell, at eight in winter, 
at nine in summer, sounded the curfew for fun and frolic, pro- 
claiming dead silence throughout the College premises. On 
Sunday all were required to attend worship twice each day in 
the College Chapel. . . . The charge for Commons was a 
dollar and seventy-five cents a week [seven shiUings and two 
pence]. The food had not been deficient in quantity, but it 
was so mean in quality, so poorly cooked and so coarsely served 
as to disgust those who had been accustomed to the decencies 
of the table, and to encourage a mutinous spirit, rude manners, 

1 Dr. Johnson, writing from University College, Oxford, on June i, 1775, 
says: "I went this morning to the chapel at six." LMters of Satnuel 
Johnson, I. 323. 



168 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

and ungentlemanly habits ; so that the dining-halls were seats 
of boisterous misrule and nurseries of rebelHon." ^ 

It was in coming from Hall that Prescott the historian was 
struck in the eye by a piece of hard crust thrown by a disor- 
derly student, and half-blinded for life. Like Milton, he was 
supported in his task — supported by a deep love of learning 
and an unconquerable spirit. 

In defiance of rules, the undergraduates began to take their 
meals outside the College. It was in vain that President 
Quincy,^ who came into office in 1829, purchased in England 
for the use of the Hall a handsome service of plate stamped 
with the College seal. During the war between the North and 
the South it was all sold. For some time, however, it had been 
lying idle, for " Commons " had been abolished a few years 
earlier. When the kitchen was closed, " the half-score or more 
of swine," no doubt, disappeared ; in Professor Peabody's time 
they had been kept in sties close to the back of the Hall. 

For fifteen years the students boarded where they pleased — 
singly or in clubs. According to the American custom, even 
those who lived in lodgings must have gone out of the house 
for their meals. Our lodging-house system, where each lodger 
provides his own food and has his meals in his own room, and 
where the landlady supplies the cooking and the service, is un- 
known in New England. All who occupy rooms in a house 
either take their meals at one common table or go abroad for 
them. There could be no Autocrat of the Breakfast Table with 
us. Our Autocrat would be a king without subjects. In 1865, 

1 Reminiscences, pp. 29, 197. 

2 The name of this distinguished New England family is always pro- 
nounced Qtiinzy. The EngUsh author De Quincey is in like manner by 
Americans called De Quinzey. 




< 

X 

< 

O 



IX. HARVARD COLLEGE. 169 

the Corporation fitted up an old railway station for a dining- 
club. As they had met with no success as caterers, they put it 
mainly under the management of the members. How far had 
*' Fair Harvard " sunk beneath its English model — " but oh 
how fallen ! " — with its undergraduates dining, not in a noble 
hall, but in a renovated " depot." ^ The age of meanness was 
soon to pass away. In the Civil War twelve hundred and thirty- 
nine Harvard men served in the army and navy of the North. 
Ninety-five fell fighting on the side of liberty. To their mem- 
ory a noble building has been raised under the name of 
Memorial Hall. 

In it more than a thousand students take their meals. As 
they pass in through the spacious transept, they see inscribed 
before them on the walls the names of those who fell. Few 
more touching records are anywhere to be read than the long 
list of these men who died for their country, most of them in 
the very prime of their youth. Here in a few simple lines, 
without one wasted word of praise, are given each man's name, 
his birthplace, his age, his standing in the University, and the 
battle in which he fell. Dull, indeed, must be the heart of the 
young American who does not here feel his love strengthened 
for that Union and that liberty which these men died to save. 

" So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low, Thotc must. 
The youth replies, L can.''^ 

The dining-hall is hung round with the portraits of Harvard 
worthies, old Presidents, Judges, and Governors of the Common- 

1 A railway station — or rather I should say a railroad station — is com- 
monly called a depot. Though in trait and restaurant the final / is 
sounded by Americans, in depot it is left silent. 



170 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. ix. 

wealth ; soldiers and builders-up of Constitutions ; Story the 
great jurist ; Prescott, Emerson, Motley, Longfellow, and Lowell. 
Here stands the bust of Charles Russell Lowell ; " the perfec- 
tion of a man and a soldier," as Sheridan said of him. Fifteen 
years before the battle at Cedar Creek, in which he fell, his 
uncle had urged the lad " to pay his way honourably in Hfe by 
being of use." ^ He paid his way full royally. 

1 Letters of J. R. Lowell, I. i8i. 



CHAPTER X. 

A Visit to Three Dormitories. — Dining Clubs. — The Liquor Law. — 
Baths. — Signs and " Shingles. " — Clubs. — Politics. — Christmas. — A 
Student's Library. 

ON a pleasant afternoon in June a friendly undergraduate 
showed me three sets of rooms ; the first in a lodging- 
house, the second in Hastings, the most modern of the Dormi- 
tories, and the third in Matthews, a Dormitory built twenty-one 
years ago. In the lodging-house he himself lived with three 
friends, each having a separate bedroom, but all sharing in a 
common sitting-room. I might almost have thought myself in 
a comfortable lodging in Oxford. In the sitting-room there 
was a piano and a couch or two, but none of those absurdly 
deep and low chairs in which the English undergraduate 
delights, though, if his room is small, a single one nearly blocks 
it up. On the walls hung engravings and photographs, mostly 
gathered by my undergraduate friend in a recent tour in 
Europe. There is, I am told, a small knot of men which 
affects engravings after Burne-Jones, Rossetti, and their school 
of painters. On the shelves there was a large and well-chosen 
set of books, most of them historical, for he was studying his- 
tory. I asked him how with his three chums — " room-mates," 
to use the American term — he managed to secure a quiet 
time for study. He replied that he mostly read in the Library 
— in a room set apart for students of history, and well stocked 
with all the works they can need. Of the authors most in 

171 



172 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

request there are several copies kept. His meals he took in 
Memorial Hall. He complained much of the quality of the 
food and the cookery. Though in his own home a plain table 
was kept, nevertheless the fare always seemed to him luxurious 
after Harvard. Some allowance must probably be made for 
the ordinary discontent of an undergraduate. I remember 
how in my college days some of my fellow-students grumbled 
over their dinner — "it was not fit," they said, " for a gentle- 
man to eat " ; though it was quite as good as any young fellow 
with a healthy appetite could require, and much better than 
many got at home. From a late number of the Crimson I 
have extracted the following information about the meals in 
Memorial Hall : " There have been on the average one thou- 
sand and eighty-five students per meal, half at the club tables 
and half at the general tables. The price of board has aver- 
aged for the past year three dollars ninety-two cents [i6s.] 
a week. The bread is baked in the kitchens. The food left 
over is never served again in any form, but is sold daily to 
the poor people of Cambridge. Among the items of expendi- 
ture are 756 boxes of oranges, 13,680 pounds of grapes, 
590 pounds of honey, 306 tons of ice, and 534 tons of 
coal." The consumption of ice seems enormous ; in an 
Oxford College I doubt whether in my time a single pound 
was bought for use at the table, and even now it is very rarely 
seen. Ices, if we indulged in any, were ordered from the 
confectioner's. In America ice is everywhere used at almost 
every meal, at all events in the summer. If they ever come 
to take afternoon tea like other good Christians, they will, I 
verily beHeve, begin it, and perhaps end it, with a glass of iced 
water. Ice-cream — ice-milk would, I suspect, more accurately 
describe the dish — is twice a week served instead of pudding 



X. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 173 

to the one thousand and eighty-five students in Memorial Hall, 
and is served plentifully. Americans who have travelled com- 
plain of the niggardliness of the helping of ices in England. At 
my first evening party at Cambridge I was so much astonished 
at the size of the piece that was brought me that I asked the 
servant to let me have only half the quantity. Even then I 
had at least three times as much as I was used to at home. 
Everything is on a great scale in the United States — even 
ices. After this experience I had no difficulty in understand- 
ing how one thousand and eighty-five students required three 
hundred and six tons of ice for thirty-six weeks of residence. 
After all, it only gives them a weekly allowance of seventeen 
and a half pounds for each man, and a great deal of it they 
take in icing their water. 

The charges of Memorial Hall were too high for the poorer 
students, who, in 1889, founded a Club of their own, under the 
name of the Foxcroft. It opened with sixty members, but in 
less than three years it numbered over two hundred. It pro- 
vides no common meal, but every one orders what he pleases, 
as at a tavern. The average expenditure is less than two 
dollars eighty cents a week (eleven shillings and six pence), 
while some members bring theirs as low as two dollars (eight 
shillings and two pence) .^ A student gives the following 
curious account of a club on a much smaller scale : — 

" I have tried boarding in several ways and find the most pleasant and 
economical, as well as healthful, to be a club of about twenty-five men, 
which we manage ourselves. We have an organization under the man- 
agement of a board of three Directors, who oversee matters, recommend 
members, and decide other questions. We hire a lady who furnishes 
dining-room and everything, except dishes, and prepares the food. A 
Steward collects the board, buys provisions, and manages the finances for 

1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 5 ; Students' Expenses, p. 4. 



174 Ji.\Ri'Ai<n (•()/././<(;/':. chap. 

his hoard. Mi)iitlily statements sliovv llic; (iiiancial staiuliiij^, and we live 
aH well as |)ossil)le upon #2.50 [io.r. yi.\ per week. We have good food 
and plenty, aH attested by the fact that each of anx men has jjained in 
weight each year. Many wiser heads have predicted our failure, hut by 
close economy and a gcrneral feeling of co-(jperation, we are this year 
more j)rosp(;rous than (-vitr."' 

It is in v.iin for .'iiiy young scapegrace of ;i sludcnt at dinner 
ill an American University " to i{'njLMnl)cr the* jxjor crc-atnre, 
small l)(;cr." 'I'o desire it would show as vilely in him as in 
Prince Hal. My friend, the undergraduate, told me that this 
I)rohil)ition had, lu: thought, a bad result. It was better for 
tlujse who lik(;d a, glass (jf beer to take it at their meals, and 
not, as they now do, in their rooms. It cannot be bought in 
('ambri(lg(;, which, with its widely-scattered ixjpiilalion of 
seventy thousand thirsty souls, has put itself under the prohi- 
bition law ; but it is got in casks or in bottles from iUjston, 
and is olfered t(j callers as wine used to be oflered at Oxford. 
After a great victory at baseball or football, men are known to 
go all the way to Hoston to drink, and often drink heavily. 

Untler the guidance of my friend, 1 passed from his lodgings 
to Hastings Dormitory, where the accommodation is excellent, 
lake the other dormitories, it is built with separate staircases, 
on nuich the same plan as an ()\r()rd College. There were, 
moreover, bath-rooms for common use, and a water supply to 
ea(di lloor. In all the other dormitories the water has to 
be carried wy in cans from tlu; ground lloor, as is still the 
case in most O.xfcjrd (Colleges. lOvery staircase has its ])or- 
ter and "goody." The "goody" corresponds to our bed- 
maker. "Tenants who desire to employ any one t(j make 
lires, black boots, etc., must arrange with the jiorters of the 
buildings in wlii( h they live." So says the University Catalogue. 

' Students' Expenses^ p. 35. 



X. • H.\l<\ Ah'l) I'OI l.h.CI:. 175 

The |)()rl('r is not. rc(|iiir('(| lo (•;iiiy up U\v\ or vv.itcr, to li^^lit 
the flic, ((» c.irry down llic .islics, or to l;ikc <';ir(' ol the l;iin|)s. 
I'or (•;!( li ol llicsc services there is u separate <liarf;e. 'UK- 
poorer sliideiits save their money by <h)iiij^ some or .ill ol tiicsc 
(hilies themselves. My j^tiide hoped th.it a wealthy heiiefaelor 
would, Ix'lore long, l)e (ound, who would l.iy a supply of water 
on every lloor of every doiiniloiy. The u ,c of iIk- h.ilh in the 
l)e(|(haml)ei is, I w.is inloinied, no! (onnnon. Less than sixty 
years a/^o it was sear( dy known at ()\rord. The I lead of one 
of our ( 'oll(7;es, who, on Sunday eveniiij-s when he is in the 
vein, (harms the ('onnnon Koom with his stories ol past days, 
told me that soon alter he entere(|,an aggrieved "scout" com- 
l)laine(| to one ol Hie tutors ol an undergraduate on his staircase, 
who re(itnre(| him eveiy day to carry all the way U[) to iiis room 
a can of cold water lor his moining batli. The* tutor n-plied 
that he < ould not inlei lere, and thai his master's orders nuist 
be olx'yed. At the same time he sent lor the youth, who, like 
Swift, ** wasiied himseir with oiienlal scru|)uIosity," and remon- 
strated with him on the needless troublcr he was giving. " I 
myself," he adde(|, "take a hot bath once a week, and no 
gentleman nee(| take more." When I entered Oxford in tiie 
y(;ar i.S55,the morning balli had become somewhat general. 
At Harvard, the Kiver Charles whi( h Hows hard by, into wlii( h 
Longfellow, l,ovvell, and the Auto( rat of the I'.reakfast 'I'able 
used to |»lung(;, is now too foul for bathinj;. There are no 
piibTK baths in the town. The (lynmasium has a lew, but a 
very fi'W. In the ('////isc/i I have seen more than one <()m 
plaint of their defK iency. In this respect Harvard is far 
behind Yale, whose noble gymnasium is am|)ly suppliecl. It 
has beiMi said, and with some reason too, thai Harvard has 
only to make its wants known, when a benefactor speedily 



176 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

arises. I trust that the voice of a stranger may reach a rich 
man's ears, and remove this reproach from a great University. 
The rooms we visited in Hastings were on the top floor. 
They were pleasant and comfortable — very like the rooms in 
one of our Colleges, only the bedchamber was far better. 
There was the wide window-seat with its red cushions and out- 
look over the tops of the graceful American elms. Above the 
two doors of the sitting-room were hanging one or two printed 
notices, which had been appropriated or misappropriated by 
some means or other. It is the pride of a Freshman to have 
his walls adorned with signs and " shingles " which he has 
" ragged." ^ An oblong piece of wood called a shingle takes 
the place in America of the brass plate on the outside door. 
It is not fastened to the door, but is hung near it on the wall. 
These shingles, and in fact all kinds of announcements and 
notices, the adventurous Freshman delights to carry off, sur- 
veying his room with just pride, when he sees on the walls 
such inscriptions as : '' Jones & Co., Civil, Sanitary, and Land- 
scape Engineers"; "Thomas Smith, M.D., Office Hours 2-4; 
7-9 " ; " Hair-dressing and Complexion Parlors " ; " Under- 
takers. Locker's Casket Warehouse " ; " The College Dining 
Rooms and Ice Cream Parlors." These trophies correspond 
to the door-knockers which have been known to adorn the 
rooms of a Christ Church undergraduate. One kind of shin- 
gles is won by easier, but, perhaps, no less glorious means. 

'* Peace hath her victories no less renowned 
Than war." 

Harvard abounds in clubs, and each club has its own shingle. 

1 '■^ Ragging ^xxci^Xy means stealing.''^ — Llarvard Stories, by W. K. Post, 
p. 66. 



X. , HARVARD COLLEGE. m 

These are not looked upon as lawful trophies of war. There 
is honour among thieves. Shame and not glory would be the 
lot of him who should hang on his walls the shingle of a club 
to which he did not belong. So nice is the point of honour 
that, much as admission into some of these clubs is coveted, 
when the period of election is drawing near, a youth of a deli- 
cate mind, if he has a friend among the members, shuns his 
rooms for fear he should be suspected of improperly canvassing 
him for his vote. With the cavalier poet he would say, — 

" I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honour more." 

Some clubs, it should seem, are started only to increase the 
display of shingles. A student told me that he belonged to 
more than one which, to the best of his knowledge, had never 
met since the day of their creation. Undergraduate-nature 
seems to be the same on both sides of the Atlantic, however 
much it may vary in its manifestations. In America it is per- 
haps a little more transparently boyish. Some of these clubs 
imitate the follies of Freemasonry in their secret rites of initia- 
tion. Their very names they try to conceal, letting themselves 
be known to outsiders only by one or two letters of the Greek 
alphabet. The most famous of all the clubs, the Phi Beta 
Kappa, — "our beloved Phi Beta Kappa," as Professor Good- 
win justly calls it, — which was founded in 1779, remained a 
mystery for more than fifty years. It was not till 1831 that 
" the veil of secrecy was withdrawn, and the mystic letters 
<I>. B. K. were found to stand for ^tXo(ro<f)ta Btov Kv(3epvr)Tr)<i — 
Philosophy the guide of Hfe. The A. K. E. is now the most 
harmful society in the College ; its regular meetings resemble 
the Kneipe of German students ; its neophytes are subjected to 

N 



178 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

silly and injurious hazing, under the guise of initiation." These 
three letters stand for the Dickey Club, a society conspicuous 
for its brutality and its folly.^ A few years ago it carried 
matters to such a pitch that its barbarous rites of initiation 
were made known by the father of a student whose health had 
suffered under them. A strong and general feeling of indigna- 
tion was roused. Fortunately the members are often satisfied 
with merely bringing down the neophyte to their own level, by 
compelling him publicly to make a fool of himself. He is 
forced to dress himself in a ridiculous costume, and either in 
the streets or at some great baseball or football match to strut 
about. So much is this the practice, that if any young man is 
seen in the neighbourhood conspicuously making a fool of him- 
self, without the justification of being drunk, he is at once set 
down as a candidate for the Dickey Club. The members 
would do well to change their name to the Dogberry Club, and 
to take as their motto, — " But, masters, remember that I am 
an ass." Nevertheless, so strange is the timidity of youth in 
the presence of their own set of companions, that not many 
men, as I am informed, when elected to these clubs dare to 
decline the dishonour. Timid though some of these youths 
may be, nevertheless, if the need arose, they would show, I 
have little doubt, that though they dared not face the scoifs 
of the Dickey Club, they were not unworthy sons of the men 
who faced death on the bloody battle-fields of Virginia. 

In our universities such follies are unknown ; they have even 
well-nigh died out in our public schools. We are not indeed 

1 "The A. K. E. (I am informed), like 4>. B. K., is a fraternity having 
branches in many colleges; the Harvard society started as a branch of this, 
but has long since ceased to recognize any connection with the general 
society." 



X. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 179 

free from a certain kind of tyranny even in Oxford. The 
undergraduate, poor though he may be, who does not pinch 
himself to subscribe to the boat-club is too often looked upon 
askance. I remember hearing one of my companions spoken 
ill of on this account. He was very poor, but when the Flor- 
ence Nightingale Fund was raised his subscription was the 
largest in the College. 

Not a few of the Harvard Clubs have shaken themselves free 
from these follies of initiation and secrecy. It is not easy to 
believe that in some of them they had ever existed. Emerson 
was elected to a club, and became thereby, as he wrote to his 
brother, "one of the fifteen smartest fellows." It is incredible 
that the New England philosopher, even when in a short 
jacket, ever consciously made a fool of himself. "There are," 
said Burlingame, the first American Minister to the Court of 
Pekin, " there are twenty thousand Ralph Waldo Emersons in 
China." We could as easily picture to ourselves Confucius 
submitting to being " hazed " as the sage of Concord. 

The Medical Faculty Club deserves immortality for one of 
its pranks. " It conferred its honorary degrees liberally upon 
conspicuous persons at home and abroad. Not only did it 
raise Chang and Heng, the Siamese twins, and Day and Martin, 
the proprietors of the celebrated blacking, to the rank of 
Doctors of Medicine, but it had the audacity to send a di- 
ploma to Alexander, Czar of all the Russians. The Emperor, 
not to be left behind in the race of honour, sent to the Medical 
Faculty Club a valuable case of surgical instruments, which by 
a fortunate mistake was delivered to the Medical School of the 
University." ^ It is perhaps by no means wonderful that the his- 
torian Motley, himself a Harvard man, many years later writing 

1 An Historical Sketch of Harvard University^ by W. R. Thayer, p. 6i. 



180 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

of " the affection which is supposed to exist between Russia 
and America," said : *' At any rate it is a very platonic affec- 
tion ; being founded, however, on entire incompatibiUty of char- 
acter, absence of sympathy, and a plentiful lack of any common 
interest, it may prove a very enduring passion."^ The wit of 
the Medical Faculty Club has long been a matter of the past. 
" Its proceedings have been kept so secret for so many years 
that only on Class Day are even the Seniors who belong to it 
known, from their wearing a black rosette with a skull and 
bones in silver upon it." When these clubs first took their rise 
Harvard was little more than a great school. The students 
were mostly mere lads, and l^he discipline was strict, as it had 
been of old in Oxford and Cambridge. It is no longer a 
school. It is a imiversity and a great university. It is time 
for it to put away childish things. 

The strife of the last Presidential election led to the forma- 
tion of two political clubs — The Harvard Republican Club 
and The Democratic Campaign Club. Under their manage- 
ment a vote was taken of the whole body of undergraduates. 
It showed that if the choice of President had been in their 
hands. General Harrison would have carried the day over 
Mr. Cleveland by 1114 votes to 851. The learning of the 
University went the other way. Of the Professors whose 
views could be ascertained, a very large majority indeed were 
for Mr. Cleveland. The Democratic Club came to an end 
with the election, but not before, to quote the Ha7'vard Gf'ad- 
uates' Magazine, " it had strengthened the feeling that there 
is no incompatibility between one's membership in a univer- 
sity like Harvard and a dignified participation in political 
affairs, even in a strictly partisan way." What a curious in- 
1 Correspondence of y. L. Motley, New York, 1889, II. 336. 



X. . HARVARD COLLEGE. 181 

sight is given by such a passage as this into the vast difference 
between England and America in the great field of politics ! 
In England, at all events outside London, a man who should 
altogether refuse to play his part in political life, would be 
much less respected. However dignified he might be, if he 
stood quite aloof from public affairs, he would be looked upon 
as a bad citizen. Day has dawned in the United States, and 
good men are seeing that the more corrupt party-Ufe may 
be, the more it is each man's duty to do his best to work its 
purification. 

The Harvard Republican Club, numbering about six hundred 
active members, still carries on its operations. During the 
Presidential election it far outdid any Society that ever existed 
for the Diffusion of Knowledge — or Ignorance. More than 
thirty thousand speeches, documents, and circulars were sent to 
the students in Cambridge. In the great Republican torch-light 
procession in Boston " over six hundred Harvard Republicans 
marched, wearing crimson gowns and white caps, the Law 
School being distinguished by the barrister's wig." The wig, 
a compliment, we may take it, to the English Bar, is some slight 
compensation for the general aim of the Republican party to 
ruin our trade. For the first time, we are told, in American 
political history " College speakers " (thank heaven, they are 
not called orators !) were sent about to public meetings. At 
Oxford, in my time, the speeches of undergraduates were 
confined to the narrow limits of the College Debating Societies 
and of the Union. They never overflowed into the town and 
the neighbourhood villages. I remember how much surprised 
I one day was on learning that some of my friends — two of 
them now famous as writers on constitutional history, one a 
Liberal and the other a Liberal-Unionist — were going all the 



182 . HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

way to Birmingham to hear John Bright make one of his great 
speeches. Had we ever thought of speaking, in those days 
of a narrow franchise our eloquence would have been of little 
avail. It was not till working-men got a vote that youthful 
speakers bestirred themselves. In the old days in a corrupt 
constituency such as Oxford then was, and among the squires 
and farmers in the surrounding counties, no undergraduate 
would have got a hearing. 

Harvard boasts of three Musical Clubs, The Glee Club, The 
Pierian Sodahty, and The Banjo and Mandolin. Of their skill 
I know nothing, but in their dealings with each other they 
seem to be unusually harmonious. In the short Christmas 
vacation of the winter before last, uniting in one body, they 
made a musical tour throughout the country. The first per- 
formance they gave on December 22, at New York, and the last 
at Albany on January 2, having in the meantime travelled as far 
west as Milwaukee, a great city on the shore of Lake Michigan. 
I doubt whether a Club of Oxonians would traverse a longer 
distance than these wandering musicians, were they in a like 
tour to begin their performances in Brussels and end them in 
Paris, having in the short interval of eleven days given them 
also in Venice, Genoa, and Naples. The trip was taken in the 
midst of the American winter. So much were the trains 
delayed by the snow that once at least, if not twice, the musi- 
cians were prisoners in a snow-drift at the very time that they 
ought to have been in the Music Hall. It seems strange to 
us that so large a party of young men should be willing to be 
away from their homes at Christmas. Longfellow recorded in 
his Journal on December 25, 1856 : " Not a very merry 
Christmas. We are in a transition state about Christmas in 
New England. The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being 



X. * HARVARD COLLEGE. 183 

a cheerful, hearty holiday, though every year makes it more 
so."^ Samuel Sewall, one of the cruel judges who sent the 
Salem witches to the gallows, more than once records in his 
Diary, with great satisfaction, the utter disregard of the festival, 
in spite of the efforts of a Church of England governor. Time, 
no doubt, has done much to loosen the bonds of Puritanism, 
and to give a cheerfulness and a heartiness to the holiday in 
lands where once it was strictly not kept ; but the genius of one 
man has done even more than time. Neither New England 
nor Scotland has been able to withstand the kindly influence of 
Charles Dickens. In the diffusion of the Christmas spirit his 
Christmas Carol has done more than all the Societies and all 
the preachers. I remember a story of a poor half-witted fellow 
who lived in a village in Scotland. When the yearly fast came 
round, which was kept on different days in different parishes, 
oppressed by the gloom of his own village he was heard to 
say, " I'll just go across the burnie and hear them whistle." 
The Scotch and the New Englanders, now that the general 
joy of Christendom has been brought home to their hearts, 
have become in like manner oppressed by the gloom in which 
they were spending the great yearly festival. They have done 
much to scatter it; but "the rear of darkness " still seems to 
overhang them, or we should not have seen these lads, far 
from their homes, spending so much of Christmas-tide in a 
Pullman car. 

This digression about Clubs has led me far away from my 
friendly undergraduate and from my visit to students' rooms. 
He next led me to Matthews — one of the Dormitories in the 
Yard. Here, too, I could almost have thought that I was in an 
Oxford College, and here, too, I found shelves well stocked 

1 Life of LL. W. Longfellow, II. 290. 



184 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

with books. I was not to infer, I was told, from what I had 
seen that afternoon, that the ordinary undergraduate owns a 
Ubrary. I have examined the expenses of the forty poor stu- 
dents pubHshed by the Secretary of the University, and find 
that their average yearly expenditure on books and stationery 
— for these two items are not kept apart — was about nine- 
teen dollars and a half (^3.19.8.). One man one year 
raised his outlay to fifty dollars (^10.4.0.), and one brought 
his as low as four and a half (i8s. 5d.). As I looked over 
my host's collection I called him "an honest man," think- 
ing how Johnson, when he was shown Dr. Burney's collec- 
tion, said to him : " You are an honest man to have formed 
so great an accumulation of knowledge." He replied that 
from childhood he had been brought up to think that he 
ought to have books of his own. I wish wealthy Englishmen 
could have had this wholesome belief given them from their 
cradle. It would be a blessed time for authors. Even re- 
spectability, the god at whose altars we offer up our most 
costly sacrifices, no longer requires that the home of an English 
gentleman should have a decent library. So far as books go 
he is naked and not ashamed. 

My host showed me a copy of The Pilgrim'' s Progress which 
he had lately had splendidly bound. It was, he said, the first 
book that he had ever loved ; most of it he knew by heart. 
He quoted Johnson's saying to Percy's little daughter, when 
the great man found that she had not read it : " No ; then I 
would not give one farthing for you " ; but by a slip of memory 
he confused Bishop Percy with Bishop Butler. I told him how 
the only time I had the honour of meeting Mr. Gladstone, he 
had insisted on the pre-eminent place Butler held among the 
great writers of the eighteenth century, and how I had re- 



X. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 185 

marked how strange it was that the author of the Analogy is 
nowhere mentioned either in Johnson's recorded talk or in his 
writings. Our host knew enough of Enghsh ways to give 
us afternoon tea. He flavoured it with sHces of lemon instead 
of cream, after the Russian fashion. He had invited one or 
two of his friends to meet us, and the time slipped pleasantly 
by in a talk about authors and books. 

Had I visited a room in one of the more ancient Dormi- 
tories, I might have been shown names and dates carved in 
the woodwork by earlier occupants. These short and simple 
annals have not been written in the light of day. They are 
cut in some secret place, behind the wainscot or under the 
floor. The new-comer oft-time has a long search before he 
can discover them. He adds his name and preserves the 
mystery. 



CHAPTER XL 

Harvard "Boys." — "Harvard Indifference." — Harvard and Yale. — 
Honest Poverty. — Oxford Servitors. — Poor Students. — " Money 
Aids." 

AN anecdote which I have from a Se,nior — a man, that is 
to say, in his fourth year — seems to indicate a certain 
modest timidity in the American undergraduate. Nowhere in 
the United States, I am told, does a young man carry a walking- 
stick. It belongs there to the evening of life, as it belonged 
in ancient Greece. That it was used half a century ago is 
shown by a regulation of 1849 forbidding a student to take 
his cane into Chapel. An attempt has been lately made to 
reintroduce it into Harvard, probably by some undergraduate 
who has been to England, and noticed how in our Universi- 
ties it has become as indispensable a part of the outfit for 
walking as a hat. My friend the Senior says that hitherto it 
has only been under the cover of night that he and his friends 
have ventured to carry a cane.^ I hope, by the way, that they 
do carry it, and do not commit the vulgarity of letting it 
touch the ground, as if it were of any manner of use to them. 
I am not sure, on second thoughts, that an English under- 
graduate has any more courage in doing what is unusual. In 

1 A friend who has read my proof-sheets writes to me : "I am afraid this 
man was playing on your credulity. Almost every student carries a cane, 
except when going about in Cambridge for exercise, or to lecture." If the 
story is not true, it ought to be ; so I leave it in. 

1S6 



CHAP. XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 187 

my day we never, when in cap and gown, carried an umbrella, 
however heavily it might rain. We used to wrap our gowns 
round our shoulders and run. This point of etiquette no 
longer exists. It has yielded, I conjecture, to the large in- 
crease in the number of undergraduates not lodging in Col- 
lege. Even at the present day, a man carrying a walking- 
stick when he is in cap and gown is a sight never seen in 
either graduate or undergraduate. A cripple alone can vent- 
ure to use one without blushing. It is only a few years ago 
that a Master of Arts, a Fellow and Tutor of his College, 
gravely pointed out to me the impropriety of which I was 
guilty in using a walking-stick when in my Academic costume. 
I have never repeated the offence, except once when I was 
lame. On the other hand, an undergraduate, and perhaps 
even a Junior Fellow, would have a feeling of uneasiness, if 
not of positive shame, if he were caught walking about in his 
ordinary costume without a cane in his hand. A cane, I have 
been told on very good authority, is the distinguishing sign 
of the University man when not in cap and gown. Without 
it a "man " may be mistaken for an errand-boy. The use of 
the word man, not only in our universities, but even in our 
schools, nay, in our preparatory schools, where boys are no 
more to be found than the pinafores which were worn in my 
young days, is a sign, however, of the greater confidence of 
the English youth. In America, boys are still boys, at all 
events in name; for often they are forward enough in con- 
duct. Even in Harvard there are no men among the under- 
graduates; they always speak of themselves as boys.-^ 

Harvard has not been quite free from a certain kind of 

1 The same friend writes to me : " This is chiefly among the students 
from the West; not at all so in the case of the typical student, least of all 



188 HARVARD COLLEGE. CHAP. 

affectation which is only too common in the English Universi- 
ties, but which is known in America as "Harvard indiffer- 
ence." It was not from their forefathers that the New Eng- 
enders got this poor quality. It was never carried across the 
sea in the ships of the early settlers. It is the very opposite 
of that stubborn strength of character, and of that burning 
zeal which sent them to the wilderness, and their descend- 
ants, "the embattled farmers," to Concord, Lexington, and 
Bunker Hill. It is the contempt for all that eagerness of 
heart and thought and life which inspires " the young enthu- 
siast " when first "he quits his ease for fame." "I do not 
love a man," said Goldsmith, "who is zealous for nothing." 
These lovers of indifference he would have shunned. Long 
indulged, it becomes ingrained in the character. It is a great 
maker of bad citizens. In a young man it almost always 
begins with affectation, and happily often dies an early death. 
It is killed by his nobler qualities, or by some strong influ- 
ence from without. 

More than sixty years ago Channing rebuked it. When 
the Revolution of 1830 broke out in France, he was "asto- 
nished that the freemen of America, especially the young, 
should be so moderate in their expressions of joy. He went 
back in memory to his boyish days, when the Cambridge col- 
legians had processions, speeches, and bonfires. Now all was 
still. One evening a graduate called upon him. ' Well, Mr. 

, ' said he, 'are you too so old and so wise, like the 

young men at Harvard, as to have no foolish enthusiasm to 
throw away upon the heroes of the Polytechnic School ? ' ' Sir, ' 
answered , ' you seem to me to be the only young man I 

one who has social training." I was, however, much struck with the use of 
the term boy ; so I leave the text unchanged. 



XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 189 

know. ' * Always young for liberty, I trust, * replied Dr. Chan- 
ning with a bright smile and a ringing tone, as he pressed 
him warmly by the hand."^ Thirty years had to pass, and 
then this Harvard indifference was swept away by the South- 
ern revolt. In the presence of that dreadful strife, indiffe- 
rence would no longer have been ridiculous, it would have 
become hateful. 

Professor Goodwin thinks that it was by "the equable 
pressure " of a revised system of instruction and examina- 
tion that "the older enthusiasm" of the place was mainly 
repressed, and this indifference was encouraged.^ Free play 
was no longer given to the student's mind. He was forced 
to attain to mediocrity in many subjects, and was not en- 
couraged, and was scarcely allowed to secure excellence in 
one or two. There had been students who had refused to 
cramp themselves in the narrowness of the prescribed course. 
Lowell read widely, and was rusticated in consequence. 
Motley escaped this disgrace, but not the reproach of his 
tutor, who one day " remonstrated with him upon the heaps of 
novels upon his table. 'Yes,' said Motley, 'I am reading 
historically, and have come to the novels of the nineteenth 
century. Taken in the lump, they are very hard reading.' "^ 
At the present day the author of The Biglow Papers and the 
historian of the Dutch Republic could have indulged their 
tastes to the full. This "Harvard indifference " cannot surely 
long survive the great reforms in education which have already 
done so much to transform the University from a mere place 
of teaching to a place of learning. 

'^Memoir of W. E. ChanniiJg, 1848, III. 304. 

2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 13. 

3 Holmes's Memoir of J. L. Motley, ed. 1889, p. 13. 



190 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

There is another fault for which Harvard men are reproached 
by their rivals and enemies. They are distinguished, it is 
said, by a certain priggishness, a certain consciousness too 
openly shown that they are not only the salt, but the superfine 
salt, of the earth — a priggishness and a self-consciousness 
which, it is said, sometimes cling to them throughout life. 
What Boston is to Masachussetts, what Massachusetts is to 
New England, what New England is to the United States, 
what the United States are to the Universe, that Harvard is to 
Boston. Among " the five points of Massachusetts decency " 
laid down by Wendell Phillips, to be a graduate of Harvard 
College holds the second place. The "old Harvard spirit" 
on which they prided themselves, was thought by some to be 
the spirit of a gentleman carried to preciseness. They are 
fond of telling a story of a man who had twin sons, one of 
whom he sent to Harvard, and the other to Yale. Before 
they entered College, no one, not even their father, could tell 
them apart; but after graduation the difference was plain. 
One was a Harvard gentleman, the other a Yale tough. Wealth 
and family are said to count for much at Harvard. The New 
Englander is as proud of his pedigree, and often with as 
much reason, as any English nobleman or squire. A Bache- 
lor of Arts of Yale, who recently spent two years at Harvard, 
the first as a graduate-student, and the second as an instruc- 
tor, — evidently a fair-minded man, — writes: "I have lived 
long enough at Yale to know that Yale students are not com- 
monly ruffians; and I have seen enough of Harvard to know 
that Harvard students are not as a class snobs. Yet there is 
a slight element of truth even in these gross caricatures; it is 
the difference between 'Fair ' Harvard and 'Dear Old ' Yale. 
The Harvard atmosphere occasionally produces ' an affectioned 



XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 191 

ass,' and the Yale spirit sometimes turns out an insolent 
rowdy." ^ 

I have been told by one familiar with the Continental Uni- 
versities that, measured by their standard, the Harvard stu- 
dents are deficient in those graces which were so dear to Lord 
Chesterfield's heart. In formal politeness, in the lesser 
morals, the students in their behaviour towards a Professor 
fall short of the standard which is observed in Germany and 
France in their behaviour towards each other. Nevertheless, 
beneath this somewhat unpolished outside much real kindness 
lies hidden. A young Professor, who had but recently joined 
the University, told me that in the midst of the work of his 
first term he had been struck down by diphtheria. His pupils 
not only every day sent flowers and fruit, but begged that one 
of them in turns should always sleep in his house as long as 
the illness lasted, so that in case of sudden need there might 
be a swift messenger close at hand to summon the doctor. 
He had won their hearts, as I learnt from another source, by 
his courage and his devotion to his work. As soon as he 
knew the nature of his illness, he had sent them word that he 
was attacked by a dangerous malady, which would very likely 
carry him off; but that he hoped that they would go on with 
the experiments on which he had left them engaged. To 
such students as these might be applied Goldsmith's saying 
about Johnson : " He has nothing of the bear about him but 
the skin." 

Whatever pride of wealth and birth may exist in Harvard 
or in Yale, no student in either of these great Universities 
need hang his head for honest poverty. Many of them gain 
their own living more or less, and gain it by bodily labour. 

1 The Harvard Cri?nson, June 23, 1893. 



192 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Wages are so much higher in America than in the old country 
that it takes far less time, and draws far less on a man's 
strength for him to earn money by the use of his arms and 
legs. Bodily work, happily, is not commonly looked upon 
as anything degrading. To gain his livelihood by the sweat 
of his brow is not disgraceful even in an undergraduate. 
Emerson, when a student in Divinity Hall, after he had taken 
his degree as a Bachelor of Arts, falling ill, went to his uncle's 
farm for a change. The Emersons were too poor for idle- 
ness, so he helped to till the ground. "Working here in the 
field with a labourer, they fell a-talking, and the man, a 
Methodist, said that men are always praying, and that all 
prayers are answered. This statement struck Emerson, and 
upon this theme he wrote his first sermon, which he preached 
that summer in Waltham in the church of his uncle Ripley. 
Next day in the stage-coach a farmer said to him, ' Young 
man, you'll never preach a better sermon than that.' "^ Not 
only will students work on a farm, for which they might as 
Republicans plead, if they were weak-minded enough to need 
a plea, the example of the ancient Romans, but they work as 
servants. They have not that miserable shame of " doing any- 
thing menial " which so often besets needy people in the old 
country, who would think it less dishonourable to live on alms 
than by honest service. When I was at Yale, I was told that 
the poorer students of that University, without any loss of 
general estimation, help to gain their livelihood by bodily 
work. Some of them in the winter tend house-furnaces, which 
only need looking after early every morning and late every 
evening. In America, the whole house is often warmed by a 
single furnace in the cellar, whence hot-water pipes are carried 

1 Emerson in Conco7'd, 1889, p. 31. 



XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 193 

to the hall and all the rooms. The maid-servants never 
attend to it, for it is not thought to be fit work for a woman. 
Wages are so high that it is only the wealthy who can afford to 
keep a man-servant, so that the furnace must be tended by 
the master of the house and his sons, or by an odd-job man. 
Such a man is said "to do the chores."^ A student tries to 
get two or three houses to look after in the same part of the 
town, so that he may not lose time in going from one to the 
other. Some give their services as waiters at the clubs where 
their comrades take their meals, receiving in return their 
board free of charge. I was assured by an undergraduate 
that no one is thought worse of for doing such work as this. 
Emerson, in his first year at Harvard, had a room rent-free in 
the President's house, by holding the post of President's 
Freshman. He had to carry official messages to the students 
and officers of the College. 

It was common enough in Oxford till early this century 
for undergraduates to wait at table. Dr. Johnson repre- 
sented to Lord Macaulay's great-uncle, a Scotch minister, the 
advantages of a servitorship, by which a poor scholar earned 
his living and his education by menial services given during 
part of every day. Two servitors of his own College attained 
great eminence last century, though an eminence of a very 
different kind. One was Whitefield, the famous Methodist 
preacher, and the other Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury. 



1 Chore, which is of the same root as char in charwoman, is used to 
describe the odd jobs about a house which are properly done by a man. 
It is never appHed to the work done by a charwoman. By Shake- 
speare (I follow Johnson's edition) chore is used of woman's work : — 
"The maid that milks and does the meanest chores." Anthony and 
Cleopatra, Act IV., Sc. 15. 



194 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Each of them might proudly have said with the King's 

son: — 

" Some kinds of labour 

Are nobly undergone, and most base matters 

Point to rich ends." 

I was told in my undergraduate days, but I do not know 
whether there is any truth in the story, that it was the Earl 
of Derby, afterwards Chancellor of the University and Prime 
Minister, who gave the system of servitorships the blow of 
which it died. When he was a gentleman-commoner of 
Christ Church he refused, it was said, to be waited on by 
his fellow-undergraduates. Dean Liddell informs me "that 
in 1830, when he first went up to Christ Church, the Junior 
Servitor used, immediately after grace had been said, to walk 
up to the High Table with a sauce-boat. This was of course 
a relic of the old custom." In Exeter College, less than half 
a century ago, the Bible-clerk^ dined off the leavings of the 
Fellows' Table. He used to come late to dinner, hitting off 
the time when the joint was likely to be done with, and 
could be sent down to him. 

Goldsmith, who had too often suffered humiliation, and who 
felt its bitterness to the full, had raised his voice against the 
system. "Surely," he wrote, "pride itself has dictated to the 
Fellows of our Colleges the absurd passion of being attended 
at meals, and on other public occasions, by those poor men 
who, willing to be scholars, come in upon some charitable 

1 " The Bible-clerk had the duty of reading the lessons in chapel and of 
saying grace in Hall." Dr. Murray's Dictionary. In my College the 
Bible-clerks — there were two of them — did not read the lessons. In 
Chapel they kept the list each service of those who were present. In Hall 
they said grace. They were on an equality with the rest of the under- 
graduates. 



XI. » HARVARD COLLEGE. 195 

foundation. It implies a contradiction for men to be at once 
learning the liberal arts, and at the same time treated as slaves ; 
at once studying freedom and practising servitude."^ He 
forgot that often it was the case, if not indeed always, that the 
charitable foundation in itself was not sufficient to support 
and educate these poor men. Like many a needy student 
outside a university, for part of each day they had to work for 
their living. Whitefield had been a servant in his mother's 
inn at Gloucester — the inn whose praises are sounded in 
Tom Jones. When he came to Pembroke College he was 
still a servant, but he was a student also. It is doubtful 
whether poor scholars were not greatly wronged by a change 
which was meant to give them freedom. The funds which 
supported them, now that the badge of servitude was re- 
moved, were far too commonly competed for in examina- 
tions by all alike, and far too often fell to the lot of the 
well-to-do. In the long training needed for the athletics 
of the class-room, money is of great service, for by money 
the services of the most skilful trainers are secured. The 
poor man fighting with difficulties may get the better edu- 
cation for the great main of life; but through the narrow 
straits of the examination-room the son of the rich man, 
unless his industry has been sapped by wealth, is often borne 
along in triumph. "As many a poor man has worked his 
passage over the sea to some settlement where a freer and 
a larger life awaited him, so by a servitorship has many a 
man worked his way from a life of low drudgery to some high 
and honourable calling. The student-servant is no longer to 
be found at Oxford. But the poor student who, in his eager- 

1 An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, 
Chap. 13. 



196 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

ness to fight his way by his learning, is ready for any duty, 
however humble it may be, finds one way barred to him that 
was open to the men of former generations." ^ I knew a young 
man who supported himself and his widowed mother by the 
humblest kind of work in a large factory. By great self-denial 
he had got together a well-selected library of five or six hun- 
dred volumes. In philosophy his knowledge was surprisingly 
great, considering the difficulties against which all his life he 
had struggled. In some parts of the Natural Sciences he was 
deeply interested. When, on a visit to Oxford, he was taken 
into one of the lecture-rooms at the Museum, he sat down on 
a bench, and looking about him, after a pause said that there 
was no sacrifice that he would not make could he sit there as 
a learner. "How gladly," he exclaimed, "would I sweep 
out these rooms, if I could thereby get a right to sit on these 
benches." There was indeed no honest service that he would 
not cheerfully have rendered could he thereby have supported 
himself as an Oxford student. "Gladly wolde he learne." 
Inquiry was made on all sides, but with all the wealth of the 
University there was no opening for such a man. 

At Yale I was told of a fund of money which, not many 
years ago, had been placed in the hands of one of the Pro- 
fessors by a wealthy man, as a memorial to a son who had died 
in his undergraduate days. It was to be used in the relief of 
needy but meritorious students. The Professor sent for one 
of the most promising of his men, an Irishman and a Roman 
Catholic, who was, he knew, very poor. The young man, 
when assistance was offered him, nobly replied that there were 
others who stood in greater need than he did, for he had regu- 

1 I am quoting a book which I published in 1878 under the title of Dr, 
Johnson : His Friends and His Critics, p. 30. 



xr. HARVARD COLLEGE. I97 

lar employment, — enough to make the two ends meet. He 
rose every morning at four o'clock, and went to a newspaper 
office, where he was engaged in the delivery of the papers. 
The Professor pointed out to him that such work as this 
lessened his strength for his studies, and so at last he induced 
him to take the money. At the end of his University course, 
he came out the first man of his year. The same Professor, 
who had spent part of the summer vacation in an hotel on the 
mountains, told me that one morning rising early he came 
across a youth who was the night-watchman and shoe-black of 
the house. Falling into talk with him, he learnt that he was 
a student of one of the Western colleges. On being asked 
for the first line of the ^neid, he readily gave it. The first 
line of the Iliad he did not know, for as yet in his Greek he 
had not gone beyond the New Testament. In his night-watch 
he had his hourly rounds to make, one or two furnaces to look 
after; in the morning he had the shoes to clean. In the 
intervals of work he had time enough left for the vacation task 
which had been set his class — the perusal of four novels, two 
of which were Esmond and Dombey and Son. At the Chicago 
Exhibition my friend the Professor found out that a Bath- 
chairman whom he employed was a university student. An- 
other Yale Professor told me that in his undergraduate days 
"ability and good-fellowship were the qualities which did 
most to make a student generally popular. There was a small 
set of poor men, distinguished by their ability, into which the 
richest men would have been proud to enter." At the pre- 
sent time I fear that both at Yale and Harvard excellence in 
athletic sports would outweigh with many of these men even 
ability and good-fellowship. 

Out of regard to the convenience of the poor students, the 



198 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Long Vacation down to the year 1869 came in the winter. 
"The longest vacation," wrote Ticknor, in 1825, "should 
happen in the hot season, when insubordination and miscon- 
duct are now most frequent, partly from the indolence pro- 
duced by the season. There is a reason against this, I know, 
— the poverty of many students who keep school for a part of 
their subsistence."^ It was in the winter that the children 
attended school. , In the summer they were, no doubt, em- 
ployed on the farms. Even at the present day, in New Eng- 
land, the village schools are commonly closed from about the 
middle of June to the middle of September. A Plan for the 
Distribution of the Tutors' Work and Service, drawn up in 
1766, gives a curious insight not only into the poverty of some 
of the students, but into a mode of life altogether different 
from that which now prevails. It was proposed "that, to 
prevent the great inconvenience attending some of the scholars 
going home at one time and some at another, in the spring 
and fall, to procure clothing, there shall be a short vacation in 
the spring and fall." '^ The clothing which they went to pro- 
cure no doubt had been spun and woven on their fathers' 
farms. 

By the substitution in recent years of the summer for the 
winter as the time of the Long Vacation, the poor but indus- 
trious student has gained more than he has lost. I was one 
day taken by a friend into a large hotel on the southern coast 
of Cape Cod where the maid-servants and the waiters were 
mostly school-teachers or university students. Many of the 
women belonged to one of the Colleges where women- 
students are admitted, and four of the waiters were Harvard 
undergraduates. The shoeblack of the year before had 

1 Life of George Ticknor, I. 358. ^ Quincy's Harvard, II. 498. 



XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 199 

been a medical student from New York. This season he 
had earned his promotion, and was now the bath-room stew- 
ard. These young people did their work well, my friend 
told me, and were courteously treated by the guests. They 
would not, he added, have tamely submitted to rudeness. 
They all took their meals together, apart from a lower class 
of servants who did the rough work of the kitchen and scul- 
lery. An American lady told me that sometimes at a winter 
dance in Cambridge or Boston a girl would nieet among the 
guests a Harvard undergraduate who had been a waiter in 
the hotel where she had passed the summer. I asked her 
what reception he would have. It depended, she said, on 
the character of the girl. Most, having sense and good feeling 
enough to respect him for his courage in earning his living, 
would be pleased; some few would be offended. 

When I was staying in a seaside village, I four times took 
a drive in a hired carriage. One day my driver was an 
undergraduate home for the vacation, and another day a youth 
who next term was to enter college. On the third day I was 
driven by a man who worked in a large shoe-factory, and who 
was taking a week's holiday. His uncle, he said, had been a 
Senator of Massachusetts. One of his nephews had just entered 
Brown University, and he hoped in time to send his own son 
there also. With one of my companions, who was a Harvard 
Professor, he discussed the advantages and disadvantages of 
some of the New England Universities. 

In the Harvard CrUnson, as the Long Vacation was draw- 
ing near, there appeared from time to time advertisements by 
business firms offering employment, such as the following : — 

"Houghton, Mifflin and Co. are desirous of corresponding 
with College men who like employment through the summer." 



200 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

"A large manufacturing house wishes a brainy \sic\ young 
man for its ofifice." 

Students, moreover, who were already acting as agents, put 
forth their advertisements. 

" Yale's disadvantages. — She has not eight quick sail or rail-and- 

water routes to the World's Fair, as I have. Stop at Washington, D.C., 

Niagara Falls, White Mts. ^13.60 saved. Tickets to all points West. 
Please call before I leave, June 20." 

" HOTEL SORRENTO, Sorrento, Me. — First-class in every re- 
spect — has a beautiful location, on Frenchman's Bay, seven miles from 
Bar Harbor. SPECIAL RATES for July. Charles V. Carter, Mang. 
Illustrated pamphlet and terms of . . . " ^ 

The Governing Body of Harvard, in their desire to bring 
the University within the reach of poor scholars, seven years 
ago opened "an Employment Bureau in the University Ofifice. 
All needy students are encouraged to seek through this 
agency for opportunities to earn money. As the Bureau 
extends its services to those who are about to take degrees 
in Arts and Sciences, and as it is able to secure permanent 
positions for the great majority of those who are graduated 
with good standing, men of small means feel more confidence 
in their future, and less dread of being unable to repay loans 
and advances to those who are encouraging them in securing 
a College education." ^ 

There are usually about two hundred names on the books of 
the Bureau. From the letters of the poor students I have 
extracted the following account of the ways by which money 
is earned : — 

"Teaching a private school and giving lessons in German to students in 
the College." 

1 1 have suppressed the names and addresses of these two advertisers, 
2 Students' Expenses^ P- 5- 




< 
o 

[Ij 
o 

o 
o 

I 



XI. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 201 

" Officiating in a small congregation." 

'* Lecturing and writing for papers." 

" Waiting on table, i teaching night-school, tutoring, singing, and by at 
least a dozen other business schemes." 

" Tending the furnaces in the house where I roomed." 

" Gardening." 

" Index-making." 

" Laboratory assistant." 

" Clerk in a summer hotel." 

" Clerk in Memorial Hall." 

" Porter in a summer hotel." 

" Publishing notes, waiting on tables, type-writing, outside jobs, as post- 
ing bills, copying, etc." 

" Odd jobs, publishing placards, advertising scheme, teaching school, 
publishing books." 

The notes which one of these students published were no 
doubt those which he had taken down in the lecture room. 
The Dean of the College in his Report for 1892-93, speaking 
of that temptation which besets lazy students everywhere to 
do no work until just before an examination, says: "If they 
were then left to themselves, they might learn the consequence 
of idleness and teach it to their successors; but, unhappily, 
their demands have created a supply of wage-earners who sell 
notes, make a careful study of the questions likely to occur 
and recur in large elementary courses, hold, on the night 
before an examination, ^seminars' in which they review, at 
one, two, or three dollars a ticket, the work of a half-year, 
and in general abet idle students in shirking their daily duty." 
At Harvard, as at Oxford and Cambridge, the orthodox race 
of "crammers" or "coaches" flourishes, composed entirely of 
graduates who have acquired a great dexterity in driving know- 
ledge into heads not always intended by nature to receive it. 

^ In America the servant waits on table; in England, at table. 



202 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

The following advertisement I cut out of the Harvard Crim- 
son : — 

''^History 12 Review. — The course will be reviewed in Manter [a 
Block of Rooms] at 2 to-day as follows : English History from 1 760 to 
1837, at 2 p.m.; English History from 1837, and Continental History at 
7.15 p.m. Fee for each review, $\ [i6i-. ^d.^ Gentlemen will confer a 
favour by not opening accounts for reviews." 

In the last paragraph it is delicately implied that the four 
dollars must be paid before the "review" begins. With such 
men as these the Dean does not attempt to deal. Indeed, he 
admits that in certain cases they have their use. The under- 
graduates who traffic in notes he would suppress so far as he 
can. " Students engaged in illegitimate coaching," he says, 
" should receive no scholarship or other pecuniary aid; for, 
however studious they may be, however resolute in educating 
themselves, however temperate in their private life, they are 
— directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously — 
enemies to College learning, College morality, and College 
honour."^ 

One of the poor students, describing his trials as a Fresh- 
man, says : " Part of this year I was very poor. My washing 
I did myself. About mid-year I was so short of money that 
for nearly two months I ate but one or two meals a day. This 
was the hardest period of my course, but rather incited than 
discouraged me." In spite of all he went through, he ends 
by saying: "My health, when I entered, was very poor. I 
left College strong in body, better than at any time for ten 
years. I have no hesitation in saying that an economical 
student can get through honourably and happily for three 
hundred dollars a year [;^6i.6.o]." ^ "A poor student's 

1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 103. - Students' Expenses, p. 43. 



XI. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. . 203 

berth," writes another man, "is not exactly a bed of roses, but 
I know that a sober-minded, industrious man can study in 
Harvard College, and not only exist, but have an enjoyable 
time on four hundred dollars a year [;£8i.i5.o]." ^ A third 
writer says: "A bright scholar or a shrewd business fellow 
can entirely pay his expenses at Harvard; but it is no place 
for a poor scholar or a lazy man." ^ 

There is a danger lest, in this sharp struggle for existence 
in a university, somewhat too much of " the shrewd business 
fellow " may be brought out in a youth's character. Almost all 
these ways of earning money are honourable; but the adver- 
tising scheme is unworthy of a student. I do not like the puff 
of the young man who heads his advertisement, "Yale's Dis- 
advantages." Such a heading would, no doubt, catch the eye 
of a Harvard man; but it would little please him to know 
that in his own University a race of young Barnums is grow- 
ing up. 

In the Boston Sunday Globe for December 31, 1893, "a 
Poor Student at Harvard " published his Memoirs. He is 
apparently still at College, so that a supplementary chapter 
will some day have to be added. His father works in a fac- 
tory, earning about nine dollars {^i.i6.g) a week. The 
son entered Harvard with a capital of twenty-seven dollars 
(;£^5.io.3), all that was left over, after he had paid his debts, 
of his earnings in the summer as a waiter in a mountain hotel. 
He hired a room thirteen feet long by seven wide. At first 
he spent on his food no more than one dollar and fifteen 
cents a week (4s.io^d.). "I remembered," he writes, "how 
Garfield had lived for thirty-three cents [is.4|d.] a week on 
milk. I felt sure if he could, I could." He soon found that 

1 Students^ Expenses, p. 22. 2 /^ p^ 26. 



204 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

his health was sinking under the spare diet, and that he was 
becoming unfit for work. He took a better dinner, and so 
raised his expenditure to two dollars and sixty-five cents a 
week [los. lo^d.]. " It kept me well; only I would get awfully 
hungry every night at about ten o'clock. I used to drink 
water for that." He at once set about earning money, and 
before long was made one of the waiters at the Foxcroft Club. 
He suffered from the humiliation of his position. " I felt 
that there was a sort of feeling against me by many, and it 
grated against my pride to be at the absolute mercy of some 
of the men there. I have always thought that some knew just 
how I felt, and rather added to my discomfort in all the ways 
they could." He does not, however, give any instance of 
insolence or unkindness. A man in such a position as his 
is apt to see "the proud man's contumely" even where there 
is none. He was too poor to pay for a laundress, and had to 
keep his soiled linen till Thanksgiving Day, when he took it 
home and had it washed there. When his clean clothes came 
to an end he wore a jersey. "This, of course, caused re- 
marks, which I felt very deeply, but I went on my way with a 
heightened colour, but still with a feeling that I was doing 
what was right." 

In his vacations he got work as a druggist's assistant, as 
head-waiter, and afterwards as manager in a summer hotel, 
• and as bookkeeper in a shoe-factory. He and one of his 
comrades were engaged one summer by a firm of publishers 
to sell books. " We were given a large city several hundred 
miles away. We started in high feather; we walked and 
tramped the streets for a week, and I never sold one. My 
partner sold three, but two days later they all countermanded 
their orders. That was the last straw, — we quit." It was, I 



XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 205 

suspected, an undergraduate who, one day when I was sitting 
under the veranda of a house at a seaside village on Cape 
Cod, asked me to buy, first some books and then some scents. 
He asked but once, and went away the moment I refused. 
By his looks and his gentle manners, he seemed far too good 
for so bad a trade. A man can pay too dearly even for a 
university education. I'he "Poor Student" in term-time got 
various kinds of employment. He canvassed for more than 
one election; he worked in a lawyer's office; he read proofs, 
and he was an author's copyist. This last piece of work 
extended into the vacation. In term-time he used to begin 
work with the author at ten at night, and kept on at it till an 
hour and a half after midnight; all through the vacation he 
was employed from twelve to fifteen hours a day. When this 
heavy task came to an end he got an engagement on a news- 
paper as the Harvard correspondent. "It was the busiest 
time of the year. Two things had to be followed daily, — base- 
ball and rowing. It really took all my day from three in the 
afternoon. It was just the time of the year when I needed 
every hour on my College work. The examinations were at 
hand. But there was no help for it." He has gone through 
the main part of the struggle, he says, and now makes enough 
money to be able to indulge in a few comforts. He has no 
longer to try to endure a New England winter in a fireless 
room. When the thermometer fell below zero he had been 
forced to order a supply of coal. He laments that his studies 
have suffered greatly from the need that he has always been 
under to give so much of his strength and time to earning 
his bread. "But," he adds, "I have more than ten times 
overbalanced that by the practical knowledge that comes 
only by actual personal experience. When I get through 



206 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Harvard there'll be no such thing as my 'going out into the 
world.'" 

Many of the wealthy students are ready enough to help their 
needy comrades. "Rich men," wrote the Dean of the Col- 
lege in 1892, "even rich undergraduates, answer cheerfully a 
call for money; but generosity of this sort tends to pauperize 
such students as take kindly to pauperizing. Something has 
been accomplished by a sort of floating loan-fund. Money 
for the student is put into the hands of the Dean, who gives 
the student to understand that, as soon as it is returned, it 
will be lent to some other student equally in need. The 
obligation thus involved is thought to be more effective than 
a written promise to pay, which seems of itself a sort of quid 
pro quo.'^ ^ 

It is not only on his earnings that the poor scholar has to 
depend. Just as we have in Oxford and Cambridge endow- 
ments for scholarships and exhibitions, so Harvard is in pos- 
session of large funds for distribution as "money-aids to 
students. Merit and need are the elements which determine 
distribution."^ No money is given, as it is so abundantly 
given in the great English Universities, to merit alone, how- 
ever great it may be. The merit of the wealthy student is at 
Harvard rewarded only by honour; but even honour will not 
always stir him up. "It is an interesting inquiry," writes the 
President, " how the College can supply the rich young man 
with an appropriate stimulus to do his best. The problem, 
however, is one which does not vex Harvard College alone; 
it has long vexed rich parents and civilized society." ^ When 

1 Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 88. 

2 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 7. 
^ Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 21. 



XI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 207 

Lord Southampton asked Bishop Watson of Llandaff, "how 
he was to bring up his son so as to make him get forward in 
the world, ' I know of but one way,' replied the Bishop; ' give 
him parts and poverty. ' ' Well, then, ' replied Lord Southamp- 
ton, ' if God has given him parts, I will manage as to the 
poverty.'"^ Poverty at Harvard, however great, without at 
all events some parts, is not looked upon as a title to relief. 
Those only are to be helped who are worthy of receiving a 
liberal education. In 1887 about fifty thousand dollars 
(;£io,225) were thus distributed; by 1893 the fund had in- 
creased to eighty-nine thousand (^18,200.) By such leaps 
and bounds does munificence advance in the United States. 
Even this large sum can scarcely sufifice for all the demands 
of studious poverty. "One-half the students," writes a Har- 
vard Instructor in Philosophy, "must be conceived as very 
poor, brought to College by intellectual and practical ambi- 
tion, working hard at their books and for their maintenance, 
and without time or money for much recreation, exercise, or 
society. This class, from which the best scholars generally 
come, is dubbed ' the grinds. ' " ^ They are like the men whom 
Arthur Pendennis despised, who every afternoon were to be 
seen in their hob-nailed shoes trudging along the Trumping- 
ton Road. 

Of the well-to-do students the expenses seem to be higher 
even than at Oxford. How much they have risen in the last 
fifty years is shown by the following passage in the Life of 
Charles Sumner. "" " His College bills did not exceed the 
average bills of his Class. Including instruction, board in 
commons, rent and charge of room, fuel, use of class-books 

1 H, C. Robinson's Diary, I. 337. 

2 Educational Review, April, 1894, p. 322. ' ^ Vol. I., p. 53. 



208 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xi. 

and other fees, they amounted for the four years to less than 
eight hundred dollars [;^i63], which is now quite a mode- 
rate expenditure for a single year." An undergraduate may 
still live in great comfort at Oxford on two hundred pounds 
a year, even though out of this sum he has to defray his out- 
lay on clothes, amusements, and travelling. 



CHAPTER XII. 

From a College to a University. — George Ticknor. — Influence of Ger- 
many. — Oxford Colleges Forty Years Ago. — Provincialism. — Founda- 
tion of New Schools at Harvard. — Duties of Professors. 

THOUGH Harvard College had from the beginning been 
a university, in that it was a place where the arts and 
sciences were studied and where degrees were conferred, yet 
it was a university after the later English, and not after the 
continental manner. It did not freely impart knowledge to all 
who sought it in all the great departments of learning. It 
bound down the students to a certain limited course ; it con- 
fined them to a four years' track to be beaten by all alike. 
Along this track all moved at the same pace — the quick kept 
back by the slow, the hard workers by the idlers. There was 
not that choice between classics and mathematics which, even 
under the early examination schemes at Oxford, was allowed 
to a certain extent ; neither was there that separation made 
between passmen and classmen^ in the college lectures by 
which the abler students were carried over a far wider field. 
Everywhere there was a dead level, a dreary uniformity. Down 
to the year 1767 each tutor had taught every subject to the 
Class assigned to him, throughout the whole course. In 
that year a change was made, and henceforth Greek, Latin, 

1 Classmen or Hoiiotirs-men at Oxford correspond to those who at Har- 
vard take their degree cum laiide, magna cum laude, summa cmn laudc. 
P 209 



210 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

philosophy and mathematics were assigned each to a single 
teacher.^ The tutors were no doubt for the most part sound 
scholars of the old narrow school — much the same kind of 
men as the masters of the English grammar schools and the 
Fellows of the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. Among them, 
however, had never risen a Bentley or a Porson, not even a 
Markland or a Parr, to set and to keep the standard of scholar- 
ship high. Greek must have been but little studied, for, accord- 
ing to Ticknor, in the early years of the present century, " a 
copy of Euripides in the original could not be bought at any 
bookseller's shop in New England." ^ He had been educated 
at Dartmouth College — Daniel Webster's College. " It is, 
Sir, a small College ; and yet there are those who love it," said 
that great advocate, with his eyes full of tears, when upholding 
its charter before the Supreme Court. Ticknor had afterwards 
studied privately under a good scholar, an Englishman, who 
had been taught by Dr. Parr. On leaving him, he entered a 
lawyer's office, but his heart was not in his work. In the year 
1 8 14, when he was two and twenty, he chanced to read a 
defence of the University of Gottingen that had been written 
" against the ill-intentions of Jerome Bonaparte." He had 
never before known the true nature of a university. " My 
astonishment at these revelations," he writes, " was increased 
by an account of its library, given by an Englishman who had 
been there. I was sure that I should like to study at such a 
university, but it was in vain that I endeavoured to get further 
knowledge upon the subject. I would gladly have prepared 
for it by learning German, but there was no one in Boston who 
could teach me. Nor was it possible to get books. I bor- 
rowed a Meidinger's Grammar, French and German, from my 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 132, 2 j^ij-g ^j- ly^ //^ Prescott^ p. 8. 



XII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 211 

friend, Mr. Everett, and sent to New Hampshire, where I 
knew there was a German Dictionary, and procured it. I also 
obtained a copy of Goethe's Wei'ther (through Mr. Shaw's 
connivance) from amongst Mr. J. Q. Adams's books deposited 
by him, on going to Europe, in the Athenaeum." ^ Neverthe- 
less, in all this dearth of Greek and German books Boston was 
known as " The Literary Emporium." ^ Judge Story, writing 
of Harvard as he had known it in the last years of the eigh- 
teenth century, says : " The intercourse between us and foreign 
countries was infrequent ; and except to English literature and 
science, I might almost say, we had no means of access. Even 
in respect to them we had Httle more than a semi-annual 
importation of the most common works. Two ships only plied 
as regular packets between Boston and^ London, one in the 
spring and the other in the autumn, and their arrival was an 
era in our college life." ^ Ticknor's father, a well-to-do Boston 
grocer, who, like Ticknor himself, had passed through Dart- 
mouth College and had a respect for learning, allowed his son 
to give up the law and to go and study at Gottingen. 

It was a great day in the history of Harvard when this young 
Bostonian set out to explore a German university. On Novem- 
ber lo, 1815, he wrote to his father from Gottingen of his 
Greek tutor. Dr. Schultze : *' Every day I am filled with new 
astonishment at the variety and accuracy, the minuteness and 
readiness, of his learning. Every day I feel anew, under the 
oppressive weight of his admirable acquirements, what a morti- 
fying distance there is between a European and an American 

'^ Life of George Ticknor, L ii. 

2 At all events, a few years later it was frequently so called. Life of 
H. W. Longfellow, I. 37. 

3 Life of Joseph Story ^ I. 48. 



212 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

scholar ! We do not yet know what a Greek scholar is ; we do 
not even know the process by which a man is to be made one. 
Dr. Schultze is hardly older than I am. It never entered into 
my imagination to conceive that any expense of time or talent 
could make a man so accomplished in this forgotten language 
as he is," ^ For the first time in his life, something beyond a 
mere collection of books, a library fit for scholars was opened 
to the young American. He had, moreover, at his service a 
large staff of able and learned Professors. " At least seventy 
or eighty different courses of lectures," he wrote, '' are going on 
at the same time." Some of the Professors were poor enough, 
for the miseries caused by the great wars still overhung the 
land. One of them told him " that when Germany was thus 
impoverished, if a Professor at Jena appeared in his lecture- 
room with a new waistcoat, the students applauded him ; 
being asked what occurred if a new coat made its appearance, 
he exclaimed : ' Gott bewahre ! such a thing never hap- 
pened.' " " Ticknor was struck with " the accuracy with which 
time is measured and sold by the Professors. Every clock that 
strikes is the signal for four or five lectures to begin and four 
or five others to close. In the intervals you may go into the 
streets and find they are silent and empty ; but the bell has 
hardly told the hour before they are filled with students, with 
their portfoHos under their arms, hastening from the feet of one 
Gamaliel to those of another — generally running in order to 
save time, and often without a hat. As soon as they reach the 
room they take their places and prepare their pens and paper. 
The Professor comes in almost immediately, and from that 
time till he goes out the sound of his disciples taking notes 
does not for an instant cease." ^ 

1 Life of Ticknor, I. 73. ^ /^. i. 280. 3 /^. i, 82. 



XII. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 213 

Ticknor had been studying at Gottingen little more than a 
year when he received from Harvard the offer of the Smith 
Professorship of the French and Spanish Languages and Litera- 
ture, and the College Professorship of the Belles-Lettres.^ He 
was to stay on in Europe for some time longer to complete his 
education. He stayed four years in all, studying in Germany, 
France, Italy, and Spain. One lesson the future Professor 
learned in a talk with Goethe, on whom he called when passing 
through Weimar. " Once Goethe's genius kindled, and in spite 
of himself he grew almost fervent as he deplored the want of 
extemporary eloquence in Germany, and said that the English 
is kept a much more living language by its influence. ' Here,' 
he said, ' we have no eloquence — our preaching is a monoto- 
nous, middling declamation — public debate we have not at 
all, and if a little inspiration sometimes comes to us in our 
lecture-rooms, it is out of place, for eloquence does not teach.' " ^ 
Ticknor was but eight and twenty when he returned to America, 
and entered on his new duties at Harvard. On August lo, 
1 819, he delivered his opening address in the Old Church of 
Cambridge before " a cultivated audience " which came together 
" to listen to the utterance of the ripest scholarship America 
could then boast" ^ These are the words of Ticknor's bio- 
grapher, George Hillard, himself no mean scholar. America 
surely can look back with some complacency on the advance 
she has made in learning since those days. 

Ticknor, though he was by far the most important, was not the 
first student sent from the United States to qualify himself for 
a Professor's chair. In 1802, Benjamin SiUiman at the age of 
twenty-two had been appointed Professor of Chemistry and 
Geology at Yale. Of neither science had he any knowledge, 

'^ Life of Ticknor, I. 116, 321. '^ lb. I. 114. "^ lb. I. 320, 



214 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

but he had distinguished himself in his mathematical studies. 
Such appointments are not unknown in the history of English 
Universities. Last century Watson, afterwards Bishop of Llan- 
daff, was appointed to the Chair of Chemistry at Cambridge. 
He was as ignorant of the science as young Silhman. Never- 
theless, of his Chemical Essays Sir Humphry Davy said that 
" he could scarcely imagine a time in which they would be 
superannuated."^ From the Chair of Chemistry he was trans- 
ferred to the Chair of Divinity, of which he knew no more 
than an ordinary parson — that is to say, very little. By his 
industry, however, he filled the post not without distinction. 
In the same University seventy-six years ago, Adam Sedgwick 
was made Professor of Geology, though he was as ignorant of 
that science as Watson had been of Chemistry. He, too, justified 
the appointment. In like manner in modern days Oxford has 
seen a retired naval captain appointed to a Professorship of 
History over the heads of Dr. Stubbs, Mr. Freeman, Mr. 
Froude, Mr. Church, and Mr. Pearson. No doubt it was 
thought that with time he would add to his first class and his 
orthodoxy a competent knowledge of the subject which he 
was advanced to teach. This, I believe, he has succeeded in 
doing. The late Professor of Arabic in Oxford, who had been 
appointed with the same ignorance and the same expectation, 
never took the trouble to dispel the one and to satisfy the other. 
Silliman made but a short stay in Europe. For the winter 
session he studied in the University of Edinburgh. On his 
return to America he wrote : '' A much higher standard of 
excellence than I had before seen was presented to me, espe- 
cially in Edinburgh." - 

^De Quincey's Works, II. io6. 

"^ Life of Benjamin Silliman, I. 195. 



XII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 215 

In 1825, six years after Ticknor entered on his duties at 
Harvard, Longfellow graduated at Bowdoin College — the 
Alma Mater not only of him but of Hawthorne. It so hap- 
pened that at the Commencement at which he took his degree, 
the Board of Trustees voted to found a Chair of Modern Lan- 
guages. The young Bachelor of Arts, who was but eighteen, 
had, it is said, in his examination pleased one of the Trustees 
by his elegant translation of an Ode of Horace. An informal 
proposal was made by the Board to his father that the youth 
" should visit Europe, for the purpose of fitting himself for his 
position, with the understanding that on his return he should be 
appointed to the Professorship." ^ Accordingly, he spent three 
years in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Like Ticknor, he 
studied in Gottingen. On his return at the age of two and 
twenty he received the appointment. Five years later, on 
Ticknor's resignation, he was offered his Professorship at Har- 
vard ; but it was suggested to him by the President that he 
would do well " to reside in Europe, at his own expense, a year 
or eighteen months for the purpose of a more perfect attain- 
ment of the German." For eighteen months he studied the 
Northern languages in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Hol- 
land, and on his return at the age of twenty-nine was made 
Professor.^ 

It was " with the vision of a real University, where all the 
great divisions of human knowledge should be duly repre- 
sented and taught," that Ticknor "returned fresh from a two 
years' residence at Gottingen."^ He was before his time, 
and he saw the vision "fade into the light of common day." 
"When I came home from Europe," he writes, "not having 

1 Life ofH. W. Longfelloiv, I. 68. 2 /^, i. 203, 243. 

^ Life of G. Ticknor, II. 422. 



216 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

been educated at Cambridge [Massachusetts], and having 
always looked upon it with great veneration, I had no misgiv- 
ings about the wisdom of the organization and management of 
the College there." ^ He soon discovered how great were the 
changes which were needed in Harvard. He set about one 
of the hardest of tasks that a young man can take upon him- 
self — to teach teachers, to instruct instructors, to convince a 
University that its time-honoured system needs a thorough 
reform. The President was against him; almost all the Pro- 
fessors were against him; even the students were against him. 
The President was Kirkland, whom Lowell has so pleasantly 
described. "He was a man of genius, but of genius that 
evaded utilization. . . . There was that in the soft and 
rounded (I had almost said melting) outlines of his face 
which reminded one of Chaucer. . . . He was one of those 
misplaced persons whose misfortune it is that their lives over- 
lap two distinct eras, and are already so impregnated with one 
that they can never be in healthy sym-pathy with the other." ^ 
Ticknor appealed to the Corporation, who consulted the whole 
body of teachers about his proposals. A large majority of 
them steadily resisted any change of importance.^ Among 
the Professors was Edward Everett, "whose coming from 
Germany," Emerson said, "was an immediate and profound 
influence in New England education."^ It does not appear, 
however, that he supported Ticknor in his great reformation. 
Some years later, when he was President of the College, "he 
threw his weight against the system."^ 

1 Life of G. Ticknor, I. 354. 

2 Literary Essays, by J. R. Lowell, ed. 1890, I. 2>^. 
^ Life of Ticknor, I. 356. 

* Lligher Education, etc., p. 215. 
^ Annual Reports, 1883-84, p. 16. 



XII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 217 

In July, 1823, nine men, of whom Judge Story was one, 
met at Ticknor's house to consider what steps should be taken 
to reform Harvard. The faults which he found with the sys- 
tem he stated both in a paper which he laid before them, and 
also in a pamphlet which he subsequently published. " All 
our Colleges," he said, "have been long considered merely 
places for obtaining a degree of Bachelor of Arts, to serve as 
a means and certificate whereon to build the future plans and 
purposes of life." No change had been made in the old 
system by which every student was taught by every tutor, 
receiving exactly the same instruction, neither more nor less, 
as the rest of his classmates. But at Harvard "there are 
now," he continues, "twenty or more teachers and three 
hundred students, and yet the division into Classes remains 
exactly the same, and every student is obliged to pass through 
the hands of nearly or quite every instructor. The recita- 
tions [the lectures of an Oxford College] become mere enu- 
merations. The most that an instructor now undertakes is to 
ascertain, from day to day, whether the young men who are 
assembled in his presence have probably studied the lesson pre- 
scribed to them. . . . We are neither an University — which 
we call ourselves — nor a respectable High School, which we 
ought to be. . . . As many years are given to the great 
work of education here as are given in Europe, and it costs 
more money with us to be very imperfectly educated than it 
does to enjoy the great advantages of some of the best univer- 
sities on the Continent. And yet who in this country, by 
means here offered him, has been enabled to make himself a 
good Greek scholar? Who has been taught thoroughly to 
read, write, and speak Latin? " ^ Nearly half a century later, 

1 Life of G. Ticknor, I. 356-363. 



218 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

as one of the Trustees of the Zoological Museum at Harvard, 
Ticknor had to address a Committee of the Legislature of 
Massachusetts. Speaking of the great work done by Professor 
Agassiz in the University, he said that by making Natural 
Science "move," he had made languages, history, and liter- 
ature follow. " Natural Science has tended to open Harvard 
College; to make it a free University, accessible to all, 
whether they desire to receive instruction in one branch or 
in many." ^ 

The whole work of the College was not, however, confined 
to "recitations" at the time when Ticknor was trying to 
introduce his reforms. Professor Peabody writing of those 
days says: "The recitations were mere hearings of lessons, 
without comment or collateral illustrations. The leading 
feature of the College was the rich provision made for 
courses of lectures. It may be doubted whether so many 
lecturers of an exceptionally high order have ever, at any one 
time, been brought together in the service of an American 
College. By far the largest part of our actual instruction was 
that of the lecture-room, where it was our custom to take 
copious notes, which were afterwards written out in full. The 
amount of study and actual attainment was, I think, much 
greater with the best scholars of each class, much less with 
those of a lower grade than now. The really good scholar 
gave himself wholly to his Avork. He had no distractions, no 
outside society, no newspapers. Consequently there remained 
for him nothing but hard study; and there were some in every 
class whose hours of study were not less than sixty a week." ^ 
Ticknor, it must be remembered, wrote as a young man, with 

1 LAfe of G. Ticknor, II. 423. 
^Reminiscences of Harvard College, p. 202. 



XII. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 219 

his mind full of the evils which thwarted him at every step; 
Professor Peabody as an aged man, complacently surveying a 
happy and a studious youth. What he tells us of the study of 
German shows how limited was the range of knowledge in 
New England. It was in the year 1825 that he joined the 
first German class ever formed in Harvard. " We were looked 
upon with very much the amazement with which a class in 
some obscure tribal dialect of the remote Orient would be 
now regarded. There were no German books in the book- 
stores. A friend gave me a copy of Schiller's Wallenstein^ 
which I read as soon as I was able to do so, and then passed 
it from hand to hand among those who could obtain nothing 
else to read." ^ 

In many respects a member of one of the smaller Oxford 
Colleges forty years ago was quite as ill-provided with instruc- 
tion as a Harvard undergraduate. In my own College, for 
instance, during the greater part of my residence, there were 
but three tutors, among whom were divided all the depart- 
ments of learning that were taught. The Master, it is true, 
every Sunday lectured on the Epistles of St. Paul. Of the 
three, one taught mathematics, and mathematics alone. Happy 
was the youth who had a taste for that science, as he met with 
all the encouragement that can be given by a most able teacher. 
The other two took between them the rest of the sciences that 
were recognized in the College — Latin, Greek, metaphysics, 
ethics, logic, ancient history, and divinity. One of them was 
a sound, old-fashioned scholar, but a somewhat ponderous 
teacher; the other was a man of amiable character, but of 
very moderate attainments. In later years he one day mod- 
estly owned to me that he had never cared for books. For- 

1 Reminiscences of Lfarvard College, p. 117. 



220 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

tunately for us, we were able to obtain a certain amount of 
instruction outside the College. The end was at length com- 
ing to that long and shameful succession of University Pro- 
fessors who, to quote Gibbon's words, "well remembered that 
they had a salary to receive, and only forgot that they had a 
duty to perform." Some still survived — one or two even 
now are extant — men who, if they did anything, did noth- 
ing more than year after year offer to read aloud the same 
course of lectures. An ardent and ingenuous youth of my 
time, or a little earlier, attended the first lecture of the yearly 
course of the Camden Professor of ' Ancient History, and 
formed the whole audience. The venerable Professor sat 
silent in his chair for some ten minutes; then addressing him, 
he said : " Sir, it seems that you alone wish to hear my lect- 
ure. Perhaps it will do you quite as much good if you take 
it to your rooms and read it there to yourself; but if you 
desire it, \ will, as I am bound by the statutes of the Univer- 
sity, deliver it orally." The youth politely assented to his 
suggestion. He read it, found it pleasingly written, returned 
it, but did not venture to form the audience for the second 
lecture. To some of the Chairs younger men had been ap- 
pointed. Mansell was lecturing on Aristotle, Jowett on Plato, 
and Conington on Latin composition. Their lectures were 
open to the undergraduates of every college. So many men 
attended Conington's lectures on Latin prose composition 
that he ceased giving them. The College tutors, he said, 
were throwing their work on him. It seems incredible that 
less than forty years ago a course of public lectures in the 
University of Oxford was brought to a close because it was so 
largely attended. Conington, no doubt, was indignant at being 
drawn away from his higher work as a scholar by the drudgery 



XII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 221 

of correcting twice a week some hundred exercises. That he 
should be provided with an assistant professor did not seem 
to have occurred to anybody's mind. Natural Science was at 
this time just beginning to be recognized — crouching Hke a 
second Cinderella among the scornful sister sciences. In my 
first term I saw the foundation stone laid of the New Museum 
by the Chancellor, the Earl of Derby. One of my college 
friends was placed in the first class in the first examination 
ever held in Natural Science. His high position had cost him 
but a few months' study. I remember his telling us one even- 
ing at dinner how that day in the Schools^ he had gone up 
to an examiner and pointed out an error in the paper of 
questions. The poor man nervously maintained that he was 
right, and offered to show his authority. He produced some 
learned work ; but, as my friend convinced him, he had alto- 
gether misread it. Oxford, in many of the great branches of 
learning, and in some respects in all, was indeed far distant in 
those days from that " real university " of which Ticknor had a 
vision. There is still not a little for her to do before it shall 
be completely realized, but in the last forty years, much, very 
much, has been done. How much, too, has been done in 
Harvard ! 

It was in the spring of 182 1 that Ticknor, by an appeal to 
the President, made his first attempt to transform the College. 
By June, 1825, though he had failed to convince either him or a 
large majority of the Professors, he had brought over the Cor- 
poration and the Overseers to many of his views. They were 
wilKng to do as much as perhaps it was wise to attempt. They 
divided the College into departments, in which the under- 
graduates were to be classified according to their proficiency ; 

iThe examination-rooms. 



222 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap, 

they allowed a limited choice of studies, and they admitted to 
special studies students who had no intention of taking a 
degree. ^ The reform failed, as reforms almost always do fail 
when they are under the management of those who do not 
wish well to their success. There are few bodies of men who 
cling more to old ways and old customs than teachers, unless 
perchance it be their pupils. The undergraduates — at all 
events the dull and indolent majority — raised the standard of 
revolt. They, it seemed, liked the good old system by which 
quick and slow, well-taught and ill-taught, jogged along at the 
same even pace. Their acts of disorder were so frequent 
that in less than two years the old system was resumed to 
nearly its full extent, everywhere but in the Department of 
Modern Languages. There Ticknor, working his own scheme, 
met with great success. He describes how in January, 1826, 
fifty-five Freshmen entered for French, of whom forty-eight 
were wholly ignorant of the language. The seven who knew 
something of it he put into an advanced class by themselves ; 
the rest he broke up into five alphabetical divisions. In 
March he rearranged them all according to their proficiency. 
By the end of the year " there were more than five hundred 
pages between the highest and the lowest divisions, besides a 
great difference in grammatical progress." Of the seven who 
had the lead on entering, not a single one kept it. The system 
succeeded, he maintained, because '' the law was administered 
according to its spirit and intent, by officers who approved it, 
and it was, from this administration of it, felt by the students to 
be useful, just, and beneficial."^ Perhaps, after all, the acts of 
disorder in the other departments were due more to the preju- 
dices of the Professors than to the obstinacy of the pupils. 

1 Life of G. Ticknor, I, 362. 2 /^. j. 367, 



XII. , HARVARD COLLEGE. 223 

Ticknor's biographer tells us that " he often dwelt with satis- 
faction on the fact that, in the fifteen years during which he 
was Professor, he was never obliged to apply to the College 
Faculty on account of any misdemeanour in the recitation- 
rooms under his charge, or in his lecture-room ; nor did he 
ever send up the name of any young man for reproof." The 
constant opposition which he encountered, whenever he tried 
to realize his vision of a great university, at last wore out his 
patience. *' As long as I hoped to advance these changes," 
he wrote, " I continued attached to the College ; when I gave 
up all hope I determined to resign." ^ 

Harvard was impeded in its progress, not only by that 
inherited narrowness which is common to so many universities, 
but also by an excessive provincialism unknown in England 
and Germany. Between Oxford and Glasgow a close connec- 
tion has existed for nearly two centuries. Adam Smith spent 
six or seven years of his youth at Balliol College. When 
Motley followed his countrymen to Gottingen, the Hanoverian 
University, he had for his fellow-student that Prussian of Prus- 
sians, Bismarck. But Harvard, so far from being the University 
of the United States, was not even the University of New Eng- 
land, and scarcely of Massachusetts. In 1831, B. R. Curtis, 
writing to Ticknor from Northfield, in the northwest of that 
State, about the causes of dissatisfaction with Harvard in that 
part of the country, mentions as " the last, but far from least 
cause, that it is the College of Boston and Salem, and not of 
the Commonwealth."- Thirteen years later, in 1844, Mr. D. 
A. White, in an address to the Alumni, maintained that " Har- 
vard is fast becoming simply a High School for a portion of 

1 Life of G. Ticknor, I. 368, 400. 

2 Life ofB. R. Curtis, I. 50. 



224 HARVARD COLLEGE. 



CHAP. 



our youth of Boston and its vicinity." ^ Even at the present 
time, with all the width of its studies and the liberality of its 
government, it has scarcely succeeded in becoming the great 
National University. A writer in the Harvaj-d Graduates^ 
Magazine for January, 1893,- says : ''The frequent remark is 
true, that Harvard is a Massachusetts and New England Col- 
lege. Although the whole number of Harvard men [he is 
speaking of graduates] is greater by 800 than the whole num- 
ber of Yale men, yet in the Middle States Harvard has only 
1303 and Yale 1986. In the State of New York Harvard has 
976 graduates and Yale 141 7. In sixteen Western States 
Harvard has 669 graduates and Yale 915." It was mainly 
Harvard's Unitarianism which made the outlying States 
unfriendly towards her. " The West is Orthodox. The States 
of the West are filled with Congregational, Presbyterian, Bap- 
tist, Methodist, and Episcopal Churches. To certain Western 
men the word Unitarian means something almost as harrow- 
ing as the word hidian meant to their children of forty years 
ago. Harvard is no longer a Unitarian College, but the repu- 
tation of Harvard as a Unitarian College still lingers." ^ Even 
the attempt to free it from religious domination of any kind 
gave a shock. In 1846, B. R. Curtis, who had been a Judge 
in the Supreme Court of the United States, and who was a 
member of the Corporation, wrote : " I am pained to learn, 
even imperfectly as yet, how lax Mr. Quincy's administration 
has been of late years, and how lazy many of the Faculty have 
become. What do you think of a New England College where 
most of the teachers do not go to church at all, and next to 
none go in the afternoon ? " ■* This laziness was not due to Presi- 

^ History of Higher Education in Ufassachiisetts, p. 82. 

2 //;. p. 194. 3 /^ p_ 200. * Life of B. R. Curtis, I. no. 



XII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 225 

dent Quincy's example, for " during the sixteen years of his 
administration he was absent from prayers twice only, and then 
he was detained in Court as a witness." ^ It was, as I have 
shown, in the hope of overcoming all prejudices connected 
with religion, that nearly forty years ago the attempt was made 
to lop off the Divinity School from the University. It is, no 
doubt, the same hope that so liberally opens the College 
Chapel and the Lecture Room to divines of every denomina- 
tion, and that last Commencement conferred the honorary 
degree of Doctor of Divinity on the Bishop-elect of Massa- 
chusetts and of Doctor of Laws on a Bishop of the Roman 
Catholic Church. The prejudice happily seems to be weak- 
ening. In 1886 only sixteen in every hundred students came 
from the West and South; by 1892 the proportion of sixteen 
had risen to over nineteen. Nevertheless, " Massachusetts 
alone furnishes considerably more than half the total num- 
ber." 2 

By the foundation of the School of Medicine in 1783, of 
the School of Law in 181 7, and of 'the School of Theology in 
18 19, much had been done towards preparing the way for a 
real University. " In the establishment of our Schools of The- 
ology, Law, and Medicine," writes Professor Goodwin,^ "which 
largely follow German precedents, we made the greatest depart- 
ure from our English antecedents." It was not so much in 
their first estabUshment as in their later modifications that 
" these three professional Schools have," to use his words, 
" fairly represented three of the Faculties of the German 

1 An LListorical Sketch, etc., p. 45. 

2 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January, 1893, P- 248. There are 
more than three hundred Catholic students in the University. Lb. June, 

1894, p. 531- 

3 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 22. 

Q 



226 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xii. 

University." The Faculty of Arts and Sciences had, moreover, 
been greatly widened and strengthened. In the first fifty years 
of the present century more than twenty professorships in 
the different schools were established. The work generally 
demanded of the Professors, new and old alike, was excessive 
in amount and far too mechanical in quality. They sat behind 
a schoolmaster's desk many more hours every week than they 
filled a Professor's chair. While in term time their whole 
strength was used up, not so much in lecturing as in hearing 
lessons, their vacations were not long enough to allow of much 
scholarly work. Longfellow, soon after his appointment, began 
to complain bitterly of his position, as the following entries in 
his Journal show: "March 6, 1839. I am weary and sick 
to-night. College duties called me from my bed before day- 
light. I hate such over- early rising. The apparition of a tall 
negro with a lanthorn in my bedroom at such a holy hour dis- 
turbs the morning vision. Breakfast at six is intolerable." 
"March 18, 1839. I have three lectures a week and recita- 
tions without number. Three days in the week I go into my 
class-room between seven and eight, and come out between 
three and four — with one hour's intermission." "September 
21, 1839. My work here grows quite intolerable, and unless 
they make some change I will leave them — with or without 
anything to do. I will not consent to have my life crushed out 
of me so." ^ He asked for an assistant in the French courses. 
The Corporation in reply voted : " The Smith Professor ought 
to continue to give all instruction required in the French 
language." He refused to submit, and in the end was allowed 
" a French instructor." ^ 

1 Life of H. W. L^ongfellozu, I. 315, 316, 332. 

2 lb. pp. 330, 336. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The Elective System. — American Schools. — The Study of Greek at Oxford 
and Cambridge. — Examinations and Prizes. — The Graduate School. 

THOUGH Ticknor's great scheme of reformation failed 
for the time, yet the seeds were sown. Retrograde Presi- 
dents might be appointed such as Jared Sparks, of whom Long- 
fellow recorded in his Journal : "June 20, 1849. Mr. Sparks's 
inauguration. His Address very substantial, but retrograde. 
He spoke of the College only, and not of the University." ^ 
Nevertheless, as time went on, and the men who had been bred 
under the old system dropped off one by one, their successors, 
many of whom had studied in Germany, revived the scheme 
and slowly but steadily carried it forward into every depart- 
ment. Harvard grew more and more unlike its mother Uni- 
versity, showing, to use Professor Goodwin's words, that its 
"chief reforms in teaching and in organization have been in- 
spired from Gottingen and Berlin rather than from Cambridge 
and Oxford."^ It was at something more than the perfection 
of Harvard as a place of instruction and education that the 
young reformers aimed. They were bent on making it a great 
seat of learning, where not only men should be taught all that 
''' is already known, but where teachers and students should join 
in advancing the boundaries of knowledge. 

It was not till the year 1867 that the first great step was taken 

1 Life of H. W. LongfelloTU, II. 142. 

2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 22. 

227 



228 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

towards this noble end. " It was in that year," writes Professor 
Goodwin, " that the elective system of studies was introduced. 
It gave a great, even an unexpected, stimulus to freedom of 
every kind both in teaching and in studying.^ " The Faculty," 
to quote President Eliot's words, " set out upon a road which 
they have steadily followed ever since." ^ It was not till seven- 
teen years later that the victory was won all along the line. 

The faults of the old system are nowhere more clearly shown 
than in the following anecdote told of Prescott's College days 
by his biographer, George Ticknor. " Mathematics seemed to 
constitute an insurmountable obstacle.' He became desperate 
and took to desperate remedies. He committed to memory, 
with perfect exactness, the whole mathematical demonstration 
required of his class, so as to be able to recite every syllable 
and letter of it as they stood in the book, without comprehend- 
ing the demonstration at all, or attaching any meaning to the 
words and signs of which it was composed." At length " he 
went to his Professor and told him the truth ; not only his 
ignorance of geometry, and his belief that he was incapable of 
understanding a word of it, but the mode by which he had 
seemed to comply with the requisitions of the recitation- 
room, while, in fact, he evaded them ; adding, at the same 
time, that as a proof of mere industry, he was willing to persevere 
in committing the lessons to memory." The Professor was a 
sensible man. " He merely exacted his attendance at the 
regular hours, from which, in fact, he had no power to excuse 
him ; but gave him to understand that he should not be troubled 
further with the duty of reciting. The solemn farce, therefore, 
of going to the exercise, book in hand, for several months, 

1 The Present and Future of Harvard College.^ p. 6, 
'^ Annual Reports, 1883-84, p, 21, 



XIII. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 119 

without looking at the lesson, was continued, and Prescott was 
always grateful to the kindly Professor for his forbearance." ^ 

Charles Sumner had no more taste for the study than his 
friend Prescott. " With downright frankness he said one day 
in the recitation-room to the Professor who was pursuing him 
with questions : ' I don't know, you know I don't pretend 
to know, anything about mathematics.' Quickly, but good- 
humouredly, the Professor replied, getting the laugh on 
the pupil, ' Sumner ! Mathematics ! mathematics ! Don't you 
know the difference? This is not mathematics. This is 
physics.^ " ^ 

One of the most eminent mathematicians at Oxford told me, 
that in the days when for the final examination for the Bach- 
elor of Art's degree some mathematics were required, he had 
before him an undergraduate who professed to know the first 
six books of Euclid. Whatever proposition he was called upon 
to do, he at once without a moment's hesitation drew the fig- 
ure ; then, leaning back in his chair afid fixing his eyes on the 
ceiling, he rapidly and without error went through the whole 
demonstration. He had done all that was required of him, 
and he took his degree ; nevertheless, it was as clear as day 
that he was as ignorant of Euclid as he had been the day before 
he was first made to take his stand on this huge tread-mill. 
I remember how one of the friends of my undergraduate days 
— a man who has since made a mark in literature — tri- 
umphantly in the presence of two or three of us committed 
his copy of Colenso's AritJwietic to the flames the moment he 
had passed his examination. 

Emerson's ideal university was a place "where attendance 
at lectures should be voluntary, and where the students' conduct 

'^ Life of W. LL. Prescotf, ed. 1864, p. 21. 2 /^y^ ^f Suvincr, I. 47. 



230 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

should be in the hands of the ordinary city police." ^ As re- 
gards the attendance at lectures, the approach that has already 
been made towards his ideal would perhaps have satisfied the 
philosopher, at least for a time. Professor Goodwin, in his 
Address to the Phi Beta in 1891, said : " It is perfectly possi- 
ble (though I sincerely hope it is not probable) that some 
whom we welcome here to-day for the first time have never 
studied a word of Greek or Latin, a line of Mathematics, .or a 
page of Philosophy, Logic, or History, during their under- 
graduate course. And yet these were almost the only studies 
by which a student could gain admission to our Society fifty 
years ago." ^ 

Before they entered the College they must have studied, at 
all events, the elements of some of these subjects. But even in 
the examination which they had to pass for admission ^ a con- 
siderable freedom of choice is allowed. Elementary Greek, 
Latin, French, and German are among the subjects required in 
the ordinary course ; but one of the ancient and one of the 
modern languages may be omitted by those who pass in a 
certain number of more advanced subjects. For instance, for 
Greek and German might be substituted Physics and Chemistry, 
and a higher knowledge in Latin, French, and Mathematics. 
A candidate who has failed in some of the subjects, but who 
has distinguished himself in others, might nevertheless be ad- 
mitted, on the condition that he makes up his deficiencies 
during his college course. Till he has done this he cannot 
advance beyond the Sophomore Class.^ The candidate, for 

1 Educational Review for April, 1894, p, 317. 

2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 5. 

^ Alatriculation is a word not apparently in use in Harvard. 
* Catalogue^ p, 189. 



XIII. . HARVARD COLLEGE. 231 

entrance into the Medical School, must pass in English, Latin 
*(the translation at sight of simple Latin prose), Physics, Chem- 
istry, and in any one of the following subjects : French, Ger- 
man, Algebra (through quadratic equations). Plane Geometry, 
Botany. Those who have taken a degree in any recognized 
college are examined only in Chemistry.^ 

In the College the only " prescribed studies " — studies in 
which all alike must share — are for Freshmen, Rhetoric and 
English Composition (three times a week) ; Chemistry (lect- 
ures, once a week first half-year) ; German or French for 
those who do not present both for admission (three times a 
week) ; for Sophomores and Juniors, Themes and Forensics.^ 
Seniors (the men in their last year) are left unconstrained. 
With all this freedom of choice, from every student in every 
year a certain amount of work is required. The studies are 
divided into courses and half courses, according to the estimated 
amount of work in each, and its value in fulfilling the require- 
ments for the degree of A.B. or A.M." In each of his four 
years a student must pass through four of these elective courses, 
receiving instruction three hours a week in each. Instead of 
one course he may take two half-courses.^ Besides his " pre- 
scribed studies," therefore, he attends lectures twelve hours a 
week during thirty-six weeks of the year for four years in 
succession."* He is not left free to rove from study to study 
among the three hundred and thirty courses which, in their 

1 Catalogue, p. 373. 

2 " Twelve themes. — Lectures and discussions of themes. — Forensics. 

— Lectures on argumentative composition. — A brief based on a master- 
piece of argumentative composition. — Four forensics preceded by briefs. 

— Discussions of briefs and of forensics." lb. p. 75. 
^ Catalogue, pp. 64, 205. 

* Some part of the time each year is occupied in examinations. 



232 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

tempting varieties, are spread before him, taking a sip at each, 
and then leaving it on the morrow '• for fresh woods and past- 
ures new." "The elective system," writes President Eliot, 
" is not an abandonment of system. It is emphatically a 
method in education, which has a moral as well as an intel- 
lectual end, and is consistent with a just authority, while it 
grants a just liberty." ^ " The Freshman Class is placed under 
the special charge of a Committee of the Faculty," composed 
of twenty-one members, " each member of which acts as adviser 
to a certain portion of the class. Every Freshman is required 
to submit his choice of studies to his adviser at or before the 
beginning of the year ; and his work is to be carried on under 
the supervision of that officer." Even when the student is out 
of his Freshman year, " his choice is limited to those studies 
which his previous training qualifies him to pursue." When 
once his choice has been made at the beginning of each aca- 
demic year, he can make no change without permission.^ In 
the college slang, a Freshman's adviser is known as his nurse. 

After I had written this chapter I received the following 
letter from a young Bachelor of Arts, who took his degree last 
summer magna ciwi laiide. He says : — 

" As you will doubtless have heard and read pretty much all that can 
be said in favour of the elective system, I shall try to show you a little bit 
of the other side. 

" A considerable number of men, in choosing their courses, look only to 
the convenience of the hour set for the recitations [lectures], and select 
a course because it chances to fall in with their arrangements, without any 
regard to its subject. Fellows have often come to me and said : ' Tell 
me a good course in the second half year, I do not want a nine o'clock or 
an afternoon lecture.' This naturally does not apply to Freshmen, whose 
choice is limited and directed by advisers. 

1 Annual Reports, 1884-5, p. 4. ^ Catalogue, pp. 206-8. 



XIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 233 

" Again, a great many fellows take pains to look for courses known in the 
College slang as snaps — that is, easy courses. These are now far more 
difficult to find than they were even when I came to College, five years ago; 
for it very soon comes to the ears of an instructor, that his course has the 
reputation of being a snap, and he takes steps to correct the impression. 

" In default of a snap an easy-going fellow will often choose a very 
largely attended course, knowing that convenient arrangements for cram- 
ming can be made before examinations. There are a number of men in 
Cambridge, who make it their business to do such work, either by private 
instruction, or at rather high rates — generally two dollars [eight shillings 
and two pence] an hour — or by seminars, that is, a general review of the 
course, given in the form of a lecture the night before the examination. 
I have repeatedly seen cases of men receiving a respectable mark, after no 
further preparation than attendance at a seminar. At these, I am told, 
the instruction is very efficiently given. 

" There are a certain number of courses, which are taken by a very 
large majority of every class at some time or other. Men are attracted to 
them by the personal reputation of the Professor, and by a sort of tradi- 
tion : every one has taken them, and it is the proper thing to do. Such 
courses are those given by Professors Norton ^ and Shaler.^ The exagger- 
ated attendance at these courses reacts unfavourably upon them; notably 
those of Professor Norton, where the class is so large that no suitable room 
can be found to accommodate it. 

" On the other hand, there are certain courses which are taken, I sus- 
pect, largely from a sense of duty. The best examples of these are the 
courses in the United States History and elementary Political Economy. 
These, without being exceedingly difficult, are by no means sjiaps. I fancy 
that they are largely taken by the advice of fellows' fathers; not unfre- 
quently, however, because a man wants to read the newspapers intelli- 
gently and the like. 

" A great danger of our system, even to industrious fellows, is the ten- 
dency to early specialization. A boy comes to college with a strong dis- 
like for, say Mathematics, and is not likely ever to take any courses in that 
department. On the other hand, he may be rather good at the Classics and 
fond of general reading, and so he drifts into Greek and Latin, or Litera- 
ture, and finds on graduation that he has a quantity of special information 
in one line, that may, or may not, be of use to him, and is wofuUy de- 
fective in general information. The burden of the lamentation of all my 

1 Professor of the History of Art. ^ Professor of Geology. 



234 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

classmates during their Senior year was, ' Oh, that I had my college 
course to arrange over again ! ' 

" In spite of all the evil I have said of the elective system, it still appears 
to me to be infinitely better than that followed in our other universities." 

Professor G. H. Palmer, who was a somewhat late convert 
to the merits of this system, who in advocating it, describes 
himself "as "that desirable persuader, the man who has himself 
been persuaded," put the following question "to some fifty re- 
cent graduates : ' In the light of your present experience, how 
many of your electives would you change ? ' I seldom," he con- 
tinues, " find a man who would not change some ; still more 
rarely one who would change one-half. As I look back on my 
own college days, spent chiefly on prescribed studies, I see that 
to make these serve my needs, more than half should have been 
different. There was Anglo-Saxon, for example, which was re- 
quired of all, no English literature being permitted. A course 
in advanced chemical physics, serviceable no doubt to some of 
my classmates, came upon me prematurely, and stirred so in- 
tense an aversion to physical study that subsequent years were 
troubled to overcome it. One meagre meal of philosophy was 
perhaps as much as most of us Seniors could digest, but I went 
away hungry for more. . . . Prescribed studies may be ill- 
judged or ill-adapted, ill-timed or ill-taught, but none the less 
inexorably they fall on just and unjust. The wastes of choice 
chiefly affect the shiftless and the dull, men who cannot be 
harmed much by being wasted. The wastes of prescription 
ravage the energetic, the clear-sighted, the original — the very 
classes who stand in greatest need of protection." ^ 

At the Commemoration in 1886, the President of the Alumni 
Association indulged in a boast which, well-founded though it 

1 The New Education, by G. H. Palmer, pp. 14, 37. 



XIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 235 

was, has of late years been a source of mischief to the cause 
of education in America. Self-complacency is none the less 
dangerous when it is found in a whole nation. Speaking of the 
first settlers, he said : " One great principle they contributed 
to the science of government, and the greatest of states and 
statesmen might well be proud of the contribution. That the 
education of the people is a public duty ; that there is a right 
in every child and youth in the land to its rudiments, and to 
the opportunity for a larger and more liberal culture ; that the 
provision for this is a legitimate public expenditure, — are 
principles of the greatest importance, and for these the world 
is indebted to them. The monuments to their own just fame 
which they reared by the establishment of this College and 
their provision for public schools are not to be found alone in 
these halls, . . . but equally in the humblest village schoolhouse 
wherever in the broad land it nestles in the valley or by the 
wayside." ^ 

If it is true that America in public education was once ahead 
of all the nations, that lead she has lost. Cobden and Bright, 
were they living, would no longer point to her as an example 
for England to follow. In elementary education, in which we 
were so backward, we have now not only caught her up, but 
outstripped her. In the secondary schools, moreover, where 
university students receive most of their early trainingj she lags 
still farther behind. Instead of advancing, as we have greatly 
advanced of late, she has not, we are told, even maintained her 
former standard. 

" It is a notorious and discreditable fact," writes Professor 
Goodwin, " that our students now come to college at the age 
of nineteen with no more knowledge than an Enghsh, French, 

1 Harvard College, s^oth Anniversary, p. 251. 



236 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

German, or Swiss boy has at seventeen, and — what is more 
discreditable still — with no more than our own New England 
boy had at seventeen fifty or sixty years ago. One of the 
greatest of the many great services which the President of the 
University has rendered to the cause of education is the com- 
plete demonstration which he has given, not only of these facts, 
but also of their causes. . . . The real waste of time seems 
to be effected chiefly in schools of the lower grades, where the 
skill sometimes shown in spreading the elements of learning 
thin would be laughable were it not pathetic. . . . Boys e7iter 
Exeter Academy now older than they once left it for college ; 
and at this age (sixteen or seventeen) they are required merely 
to ' have some knowledge of Common School Arithmetic, writ- 
ing, spelling, and the elements of English Grammar.' I select 
Exeter as an example, not by way of censure, but hono7'is causa. 
We are sure that she does her best with the material which 
comes to her from the lower schools. And this is the best 
which one of the oldest and most ambitious New England 
academies can now demand from boys of sixteen and seven- 
teen, hardly as much as she could once have demanded and 
obtained from boys of twelve and thirteen."^ 

Two years ago a Committee on Secondary School Studies 
was appointed by the National Education Association. The 
Chairman was President Eliot. The Committee nominated 
nine " Conferences," each composed of men of great experience 
in the subject which it was to investigate. In the nine reports 
which they issued, one common desire was found running 
through all : "That the elements of their several subjects should 
be taught earlier than they now are."" The Latin Conference 

1 The Present and Ftitiire of Harvai'd College, pp. 36-39. 

2 Report of the Coininittee on Secondary School Studies, Washington, 
1893, p. 14. 



XIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 237 

reported : " In the United States the average age at which the 
study of Latin is begun is about fifteen years, and probably 
above the number rather than below it. In England and on 
the Continent the study is seldom begun so late as at the age 
of twelve, and much oftener between the ages of nine and eleven ; 
in other words, from four to six years earlier than with us." ^ In 
a footnote on this passage there is seen the curious change 
which has come over the words Grammar School in America. 
"In Michigan," we read, "successful experiments have been 
made in introducing the study of Latin into the Grammar 
School ; and the trial is also being made in certain Grammar 
Schools in Massachusetts." In England, Grammar School 
almost everywhere retains the sense in which Johnson defines 
it : "A school in which the learned languages are grammatically 
taught." Such a school no doubt once was "The Faire Gram- 
mar School" in the American Cambridge, now, by an unhappy 
change, known as the Washington School. So much has even 
the tradition of the older education passed away, that " in a 
recent Convention of Teachers, not far from Boston, a story of 
some Enghsh schoolboys, who appeared to be as far advanced 
in their studies as most Sophomores or Juniors in New England 
colleges, was received with many expressions of astonishment 
and with some of increduhty."^ 

Of this general neglect to lay the foundations of the higher 
learning at an early age, there are doubtless many causes of which 
I know nothing. I have been told that many an American 
father, whose youth had been one hard struggle, is bent on 
letting his children have what he calls " a good time." " There 

1 Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, Washington, 
1893, P- 60. 

2 School and College, February, 1892, p. 99. 



238 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

must," writes Professor Goodwin, "be a thorough awakening 
and change of heart on the part of indulgent parents, so that 
they shall no longer consent to the long periods of idleness 
which now interrupt their children's study, or, at least, shall no 
longer encourage and seek to extend them." ^ Schoolmasters 
seem almost as weak as parents are indulgent. "Another evil, 
one peculiar to this country, but a most unnecessary one, is the 
constant interruption of study by calls of society, and by a 
thousand other distractions which in other countries would 
never be allowed to break in upon study in school." ^ But 
who can look for strictness in schoolmasters, who hold their 
office by an uncertain tenure, and who might be cast adrift by 
the votes of a few touchy parents ? " Some of the conditions 
of the pubHc school service in this country," writes Presi(;Jent 
Eliot, " particularly the uncertain tenure of office, and the fluc- 
tuating quality of school committees or boards, are unfortunately 
averse to the creation of a class of highly educated and ex- 
perienced schoolmasters ; but custom, if not statute, makes 
some public school offices fairly permanent, the endowed 
schools of the country already offer a considerable number of 
desirable posts, and the large cities support many profitable 
private schools of great merit." ^ That hateful system of "the 
spoils to the victors," has been allowed, it seems, to cast its 
taint even on the education of children. 

The money which is laid out freely on schools is not always 
laid out wisely. " The same profuse liberaHty which spends a 
quarter or a half million of dollars on a schoolhouse would be 
equally ready to equip the school within on a corresponding 

1 School and College, February, 1892, p. 104. 

2 The Present and Future of LLarvard College, p. 37. 
^Reports, 1891-92, p. 16. 



XIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 239 

scale, if it only knew how this could be wisely done." ^ Bad 
systems of teaching, moreover, " which are imposed on the 
teachers by standing rules, and often compel a good teacher to 
waste nearly as much time as a poor one," are answerable for a 
great part of the general backwardness.* The quick and eager 
boy is sacrificed to the dull and sluggish, the hard worker to the 
idler. "Classes often have an amount of work given them 
for a year which any bright boy or girl can do in three months, 
while there is no regular provision by which those who can do 
it in less time shall as a matter of course go on to other work." ^ 
It is this dead level at which the pupils are kept, added to the 
extraordinary delay in setting them to study Greek and Latin, 
which brings the most promising lads to the University so far 
behind our highest standard. There are no scholars of Balliol 
or of Trinity, Cambridge, to be found among them. " It is 
now a familiar truth to most of us," writes Professor Goodwin, 
" that students come to Harvard College at nineteen, in most 
cases badly prepared to pass an examination which boys of 
sixteen or seventeen would find easy work in England, Germany, 
France, or Switzerland. Most of these young men have spent 
the preceding three, four, or five years in doing boys' work, 
which should all have been finished before they were sixteen. 
At their age time is precious, at least in their parents' eyes, and 
there is generally a struggle to finish their work in the shortest 
possible time. The preparatory schools, therefore, devote their 
chief energies to ' fitting ' candidates for the examination, which 
the College mercifully divides between two years to temper its 
severity. It is, after all, a mere ' pass ' examination, which 
seldom gives any opportunity to display real scholarship ; and 

1 School and College, February, 1892, p. 100. 
^ Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 37. 



240 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

yet it is held to be a distinction to attain three-quarters of the 
mark in any subject ; and this attainment is paraded as an 
* honour,' which reflects glory on the pupil and on the school 
which sent him." ^ After giving an account of the classical 
authors studied in the higher forms at our Westminster School, 
Professor Goodwin continues : "These boys need very little of 
this to enter either Cambridge or Oxford, where, in most colleges, 
hardly as much is required for admission as at Harvard or Yale ; 
but they know that those who bring only the absolute require- 
ments for admission are practically excluded from all the better 
instruction at both Universities, where no scholar of distinction 
gives his time to ' pass men.' " How little the highest kind of 
instruction is generally given in the American High Schools is 
shown by the fact that, " although Harvard draws rather more 
than one-third of her students from States outside New Eng- 
land, the whole number of students who have come to her from 
the High Schools of these States during a period of the last 
ten years is but sixty-six. Fitting for college is becoming an 
alarmingly technical matter, and is falHng largely into the hands 
of private tutors and academies." ^ 

It is not the duller students at Harvard, or even perhaps the 
average students, who are below the standard of the same two 
classes of men at our Universities. Nothing could surpass the 
grossness of the ignorance of many of the undergraduates who 
come from our most famous schools. I used to hear one of the 
first mathematicians in Oxford piteously lament the hard fate 
which condemned him to try to put a little arithmetic into 
the heads of young men whose understandings had been hope- 

1 Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January, 1893, p. 190. 

2 The New Education, by G. H, Palmer, Professor of Philosophy in 
Harvard University, p- 75- 



XIII. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 241 



lessly disordered by bad teaching. " Why, sir, do you not use 
your common sense?" he one day impatiently asked one of 
his pupils, " I did not know that common sense had anything 
to do with arithmetic," was the reply. We are not, however, 
quite so bad as we were. We have made some advance since 
the day — forty years or so ago — when a promising classical 
scholar, fresh from Eton, was seen by his tutor adding up a 
column in which he had entered 2S. 6d. six times over. He 
was thus laboriously arriving at the cost of half a dozen pairs of 
stockings which he had just bought. " Why do you not do it 
by multiplying? " asked the tutor. " I do not know what you 
mean," the youth modestly answered. When he was shown the 
process and had had explained to him all the mystery of the 
multipUcation table, he was so much taken with the extraordi- 
nary facilities which it afforded, that in less than a week he had 
it by heart. 

In America, it is clear, a better classification is needed both 
in the schools and in the Universities. Democratic equality has 
been allowed, it seems, to invade even the province of the mind. 
All the realm of learning is in common. It is felony, not to 
drink small beer, but to ask for stronger ale than most heads 
can stand. In the school there should be that sixth form which 
the dull and backward are never suffered to encumber ; and even 
in this sixth form there should be no absolute equality of study. 
The ablest scholars, while they did all that was done by the 
others, should have a wider range of subjects. In the University 
there should be established that division between " passmen " 
and "classmen" which is for the benefit of the slow and 
ignorant almost as much as of the well-trained scholar. He 
must no longer be made to work on the same lines as the dunce 
and the idler, merely doing well what they do ill. It is on a 

R 



242 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

higher level he should study, and at a greater pace that he should 
advance. At Harvard, as I am informed by one of the most 
eminent of the Professors, " it is perfectly possible for the best 
scholars (in rank) to earn their rank and their scholarships too 
in courses of study in which the lowest in rank can pass without 
censure. This is intolerable ; and yet it would require a severe 
wrench to break us off from it. Our higher courses, it is true, 
give students an opportunity to study on a higher level ; but we 
still give our rank and our scholarship to those who stand 
highest in the general competition ; and it is much easier to 
stand high in a lower course than in a higher." To attain the 
highest success the student has to reach the top in each one of 
the sixteen courses through which he has passed in his four 
years at College. Whether he has stood on the summit of 
sixteen mole-hills or sixteen mountains matters not a whit. 

These evils, great as they undoubtedly are, have happily 
been lessened by the elective system. Real scholars would not 
sacrifice rank to knowledge, but would choose the higher courses. 
Thus by a natural process they would classify themselves. It is 
in the Graduate School, however, free as it is from all artificial 
rewards, that the Professor who has the cause of learning deeply 
at heart finds his greatest comfort and hope. In it, I am told, 
there are students as good as the best in Oxford and Cambridge 
— not perhaps so ready and versatile, for they have not passed 
through a long and often harmful course of systematic training, 
but nevertheless nowise inferior to them in knowledge and in 
a love of learning. 

In our ancient Universities, though of late years far greater 
freedom has been given than of old, nevertheless, the battle of 
" elective studies " — to use the American term — is still going 
on. At Oxford and at Cambridge no one can take his degree 



XIII. , HARVARD COLLEGE. 243 

who has not some knowledge of Greek and Latin. At Oxford 
he can bid farewell to the classics when he has passed his first 
examination ; ^ but without some Greek and Latin, enough to 
be a worry, but scarcely enough to be an advantage, the Uni- 
versity is barred even to the most ardent learner. It is but a 
short while since, at Cambridge, the attempt to make Greek an 
optional study was defeated by an overwhelming majority. In 
neither University does the widest knowledge in one depart- 
ment make up for total ignorance in another. A student 
might write as good Latin as Erasmus ever wrote, and might 
in Mathematics give the promise of a second Newton, or in 
Natural Science of a second Darwin, — unless he knows his 
Greek irregular verbs, Oxford and Cambridge will have none of 
him. Many years ago I had a pupil who was painfully carried 
on in Latin to the edge of the subjunctive mood. Over it he 
could never advance one step without coming to the ground. 
To attempt to force him to learn Greek would have been an 
act of wanton cruelty. At the end of one summer hoHdays 
his mother wrote to tell me that she had met the Honourable 

Mr. W , who was astonished at finding that her son did not 

learn Greek. " Every English gentleman," he said, " learnt 
Greek." She wished, therefore, that her son should at once 
begin. Most unwiUingly I set the poor dullard to work at the 
grammar. When he had struggled on as far as the end of the 
nouns, I told him that he need go no further ; for that now, 
quite as much as a great many of these English gentlemen, he 
could say that he had learnt Greek. His mother was, I 
believe, satisfied. At all events, I heard no more of the 

Honourable Mr. W . It is much to be wished that our 

universities, if they cannot make up their minds to altogether 

1 Responsions, once vulgarly known as the little go, but now as smalls. 



244 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

abandoning compulsory Greek, should get over the difficulty 
by some ingenious fiction. They might, for instance, decree, 
that in the case of a student who shows unusual proficiency in 
any great branch of learning, it shall be taken for granted that 
he does know Greek, and that the examiners shall no more pre- 
sume to test his knowledge of that language than Don Quixote 
presumed to test the strength of his patched-up helmet. 

The advantage of this system of elective studies, not only in 
other branches of learning, but even in Greek, is set forth 
by a man whose name on such a point carries great weight on 
both sides of the Atlantic. The Professor of Greek Literature 
in Harvard University, Dr. Goodwin, the man who, of all 
others, should have mourned over the change, is loud in its 
praise. It was in 1856 that he began to teach at Harvard. 
" In that year, when Greek and Latin were both required until 
the end of the Junior [third] year, all the work in them was 
done by five teachers. Now [in 189 1], when both are entirely 
elective from the beginning, eleven or twelve teachers are 
fully employed. It need hardly be said that the standard of 
scholarship in every department was at once raised by this 
reform. It sprang up of itself the moment the old pressure 
was taken off. . . . I cannot emphasize too strongly that the 
chief merit of the present elective system is not that it lets 
students study what they like and avoid what they dislike, but 
that it opens to all a higher and wider range of study in every 
field ; in short, it has made really high scholarship possible." ' 
President Eliot, speaking of the system generally, says that " it 
gives every teacher the precious privilege of having no student 
in his class who has not freely chosen to be there." ^ This 

1 The Pi-esent and Future of Harvard College, p. 14. 

2 Annual Reports, 1884-85, p. 46. 



XIII. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 245 



privilege, as I have shown, is too often abused by the idlers 
and the indolent, who at Harvard, just as it happens at Oxford, 
as far as they can, follow those studies in which, with the least 
trouble to themselves, they can take their degree. In Harvard 
the degree is not won, as in the English Universities, by suc- 
cess in three or four public examinations, conducted by Boards 
of Examiners, but by the student satisfying his instructor in each 
one of the eighteen courses through which he passes in his 
four years. ^ The instructor, I was told, does not altogether go 
by the answers in the examinations which he himself com- 
monly holds, but he takes into consideration the difficulties 
which may have arisen through such circumstances as illness or 
the death of a near relative. He considers, moreover, a stu- 
dent's habits — whether of idleness or industry. One of the 
Professors whom I consulted thought the standard too low; 
another said that the system works well if each Professor 
examines his own class. He alone, who had taught them, was 
competent to test the student's knowledge of what they had 
been taught. At the end of each course *' the standing of each 
student is expressed, according to his proficiency, by one of 
five grades." He who, at the close of his career, is found to 
have attained the highest grade in fifteen courses, takes his 
degree summa cum lattde. The highest grade in nine courses, 
or the highest or second in fifteen, confers a magna cum 
laude ; and the highest or second in nine courses confers a 
cum laude. The sicmma cum laude, moreover, is conferred 
on any one who, in a special examination, conducted by a com- 
mittee of the Faculty, near the close of the Senior year, has 
shown great proficiency in any department. ^ 

Such a system of examinations as I have described does not 

1 Catalogue, p. 209. ^ /^. pp. 210-215. 



246 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

put the students through that severe course through which the 
highest students of Oxford and Cambridge pass — a course 
which, so long as it has not strained the mind or weakened the 
body, admirably fits a man for the severest toil of professional 
life. He who, with health unimpaired, is placed at Oxford in 
the First Class in the School of Literae Humaniores, or at 
Cambridge high among the Wranglers, is not very likely in 
after life to be daunted or baffled by any kind of work, how- 
ever hard or dry it may be. It does to perfection that which 
it was meant to do. It fits men for the great world — for suc- 
cess at the Bar and in public life. It turns out great lawyers 
and great statesmen. It keeps up a constant supply of lead- 
ing-article writers — men who can rapidly make themselves 
masters of facts and as rapidly set them forth in a clear and 
able form. It confers infinite dexterity and readiness. On 
the other hand, it breaks down a certain number — perhaps 
not many — by the excessive strain it puts upon them, and it 
unfits still more for the scholar's life. It is for success, not 
for knowledge, that the struggle has been, and it is success 
and not knowledge that far too often is its great reward. " Do 
not spoil your careers," the late Master of BaUiol used to say 
to his undergraduates. He was the last man to have agreed 
with Mr. Lowell's notion of a University, that it is " a place 
where nothing useful is taught." ^ I have heard of a humorous 
saying of the Master's that " Diogenes Laertius was a learned 
man in the worst sense of the word." There are learned men 
even worse than Diogenes Laertius — men gifted with great 
powers, who, having by their learning won a high reputation, 
then turn traders, and instead of increasing knowledge, traffic 
in it. The Oxford and Cambridge scholars are far less likely 

1 Harvard College, 2^oth Anniversary, p. 216. 



XIII. ^ HARVARD COLLEGE. 247 

than the scholars of a German University to spoil their careers 
by giving themselves up to the noble, but ill-requited life of a 
man of learning. It is not in the Schools of either of our 
great Universities that is awakened that ardent spirit of research, 
that love of knowledge for its own sake, which is the glory of 
Germany. Finis coronat opus. The First Class, or the 
Wranglership, is achieved, and the goal is won. In a way as 
strange as it is absurd, these high distinctions sometimes chill 
aspirations. I have heard a great Greek scholar at Oxford 
pleasantly describe how a First Class man often becomes afraid 
of his own reputation — the reputation which he gained before 
his moustache was fully grown. Throughout life he will not 
give to the world any piece of learned work, lest it should not 
be found up to the high- water mark of his two and twentieth 
year. In Harvard there is none of this blaze of glory that 
comes at the end of a strain prolonged through many years. 
It is no training-place for mental athletes. But while some- 
thing thereby is lost, much is gained. There are no false 
suns to dazzle the scholar's eyes. It is not the goal of a 
four years' course, with its shining pillars, that lies before 
him, but the boundless horizon of the great ocean of truth 
all undiscovered. 

The Fellowships which the University offers to graduates are 
not prizes for what they have already learnt, but means of sup- 
port while they learn more. No young Bachelor of Arts is 
splendidly rewarded for his success in examinations by an 
annual allowance of two hundred pounds for the next seven 
years. There is no Derby Scholarship that adds one hundred 
and fifty-seven pounds to the youth who, in all probability, 
has already won more money prizes than any man of his stand- 
ing. There is no Tom Tiddler's ground where the *' brilliant " 



248 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

men ^ pick up gold and silver. All the money that is given, is 
given not to reward students, but to support them in further 
studies. They either go to work in some foreign university, or 
far more commonly, they stay on to work in the Graduate School 
— that School in which Ticknor's vision of the real university 
is fast taking a substantial and a noble form. It was founded 
in 1872; but ''for many years its development was retarded 
by illiberal and artificial rules of admission. ... In the 
meanwhile other universities, unhampered by inconvenient tra- 
ditions, working on freer Hues, and amply provided with fel- 
lowships of considerable value, with free tuition added, in 
many cases, to their stipend, outstripped us in the path we were 
entering."^ "The enthusiasm," writes Professor Goodwin, 
" with which our best Universities are now organizing studies 
for Bachelors of Arts, and the increasing resort of graduates to 
these centres of learning, show the power of this movement 
towards true university education, a power which is just begin- 
ning to be felt. We owe special gratitude to the Johns Hop- 
kins University at Baltimore, which called public attention to 
the importance of this movement by its bold experiment of 
estabhshing its Graduate School before any other department 
was organized, and by devoting its chief energies to this from 
the beginning. In these new Graduate Schools we see the 
brightest hope for the future American University." ^ 

It is in this school that the best of the students not only 

1 At Oxford, and perhaps also at Cambridge, a " brilliant " man is an 
undergraduate who does " brilliant " work and writes " brilliant " essays. 
It not unfrequently seems that brilliant must have much the same deriva- 
tion as Incus — a non lucendo. 

2 From a Circular of Ten of the Members of the Administrative Board 
of the Graduate School, dated November 20, 1893. 

3 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 16. 



XIII. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 249 



gather knowledge but help to increase it. Here it is that is 
done '' that work which is the highest duty of every university, 
without which no institution has ever been called a university by 
men who weigh their words with full intelligence, — the work of 
advancing the boundaries of knowledge by the original researches 
and the joint labours of its professors and its students." i 
Graduates of other Universities are flocking to it from all sides ; 
nay, even Professors, who, having obtained a year's leave of 
absence, descend from their chairs to take their seats once more 
on the scholars' bench. Among these ardent students I had the 
pleasure of meeting the President of one of the smaller Western 
Universities. Such a body of men as this gives a higher tone 
and a more vigorous life to the whole University. It inspirits 
the work of the Professors, who no longer have to travel year 
after year the same round. It sets a higher standard before 
the undergraduates, who have in their midst '' men full of the 
spirit of independent work, and of a sense of the value and 
meaning of learning." It opens up to them other and nobler 
fields of fame than the baseball and football grounds, and a 
greatness immeasurably above the greatness of the mightiest 
of athletes. The rapid growth of this school shows how much 
it was needed and how excellent are its methods. In 1886 it 
numbered but sixty-four resident students, and in 1889 ninety- 
six. It can now boast of two hundred and forty-five. Besides 
these it has eleven non-resident Fellows, of whom eight are 
studying in Germany and two in France. " It is already larger 
than Harvard College was fifty years ago." - One thing is want- 
ing. It has none of that social life which not only throws a 
charm over the years spent in a great University, but which 

1 A Circular, etc. 

2 Annual Reports, 1892-93, pp. 28, no ; Catalogue, p. 287. 



250 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

teaches a lesson which cannot be got out of books. "The 
majority of the students in the Graduate School," writes an 
Instructor in Philosophy, " are forlorn atoms, and their con- 
course is too fortuitous ever to make a world. A man who has 
been only at the Graduate School is not a Harvard man." ^ 
This statement, I am told, is somewhat overdrawn. Groups 
are formed of the men of each district of the country. The 
Californians, for instance, would hang together, and so would 
the students from the maritime provinces. The day, it is to be 
hoped, will come before long when, in some noble building, 
they will all share in a common life. 

It was not till 1886 that admission to the school was put on a 
sound footing. It was in that year that the governing bodies 
at last shook themselves free from the conviction that none must 
come to study at a University but those who are candidates for 
a degree — a conviction which still constrains Oxford. They 
rose to the thought that at a University it is knowledge which 
should be sold and not distinctions, and that for all who thirst 
for it the gates of the fountains of learning should be opened 
wide. Every one is freely admitted who can show that he has 
already learnt enough to be able to follow the higher studies. 
In this school he finds " perfect freedom both in teaching and 
in learning. It has no degree in course for which all students 
are candidates, and consequently no paternal supervision of each 
student's daily work." - Many indeed aim at the higher degrees 
of Master of Arts or of Doctor of Philosophy or Science, for no 
longer are the higher degrees conferred without examination. 
Up to 1872, as is still the case in Oxford and Cambridge, the 
Master's degree had been given after a certain lapse of time 

1 Educational Review, April, 1 894, p. 320. 

2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 23. 



XIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 251 

as a matter of course. Now it is only awarded after a further 
study of one year at the College — a study which may be con- 
fined to a single department.' The Doctor's degree is given 
" on the ground of long study and high attainment in a special 
branch of learning, manifested not only by examinations, but by 
a thesis, which must be presented and accepted before the can- 
didate is admitted to examination, and must show an original 
treatment of a fitting subject, or give evidence of independent 
research." ^ 

In America it has hitherto been more difficult even than in 
England to give men the love of the scholar's life — the life of 
*' plain living and high thinking." On that vast continent the 
great and rapid conquests of man over wild nature, with the 
splendid rewards that followed in their train, tempt almost all 
the ablest men away from the world of thought to the world of 
action. Even some of the lately-founded universities seem 
not unlikely, by the aid of their noble endowments, to bear 
their part in corrupting pure learning. In their eagerness to 
secure, perhaps not so much the ablest Professors as the fame 
of having them, they offer needlessly high salaries. During 
the academical year 1891-92, "seven universities and colleges 
made ineffectual efforts to draw teachers of Harvard into their 
service. Four Professors, four Assistant- Professors and six 
Instructors declined offers of higher pay and higher titles at 
other institutions." Among the causes "which bind its teach- 
ers to the University," President Eliot reckons " the dignity 
and stability of the institution ; the perfect liberty of opinion ; 
the freedom in teaching — every teacher teaching as he thinks 
best, except as the more experienced teachers may persuade 
and inform the less experienced; the great resources of the 

^ Higher EducaHon, etc., p. 160; Catalogue, p. 297. ^^ Lb. p. 299. 



252 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xiii. 

University in books and collections, and the fact that any 
teacher can at any time cause books desirable in his depart- 
ment to be bought by the Library; the separation of Cam- 
bridge from the luxurious society of great cities, etc., . . . 
and lastly, the consideration which learning and high character 
traditionally enjoy in Eastern Massachusetts, independent of 
pecuniary condition." ^ 

^ Annual Reports ^ 1891-92, p. 8. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

The Law School. — Nathan Dane. — Joseph Story. — Professor Langdell. 
— The Law Library. — The Law Review. 

OF her Law School Harvard can be prouder even than of 
her Graduate School ; for, great as are the hopes given 
by one, scarcely less great are the performances of the other. 
In it is done that which in some happier day in our own coun- 
try will be done, not in the Solicitor's office and in the Barris- 
ter's chambers, but in Oxford and Cambridge. It is here that 
the young American receives his legal training. No lawyer of 
any standing, I was told, would admit into his office a pupil 
who had not been through the regular course of a University 
Law School. My legal friends were astonished when I spoke 
of the fee of three hundred guineas paid in England to a 
solicitor by his articled clerk, and of one hundred guineas paid 
to a barrister by his pupil for leave to work in his chambers 
for a year. In America, so far from there being a fee paid, 
there is often from the first a salary given, however small. The 
Harvard Law School, so President Eliot reported eight years 
ago, " for several summers past has been unable to fill all the 
places in lawyers' offices which have been offered it for its 
third-year students just graduating. There have been more 
places offered, with salaries sufficient to live on, than there 
were graduates to take them."^ In these offices there is, of 
course, none of that license allowed which is the ruin of so 

1 Quoted in The Green Bagiox January, 1889, p. 22. 
253 



254 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

many of our students of law at home. The same punctuality 
and industry are required of the young lawyer as of the com- 
mon clerks. Not a few graduates in law, on taking their 
degree, at once begin to practise on their own account. 
Those, however, who are going to settle outside New England 
and New York, would have first to master the practice and 
statute law of the State in which they intend to establish them- 
selves. *' Honour graduates are certain to receive invitations 
to enter leading law offices in various parts of the country."^ 
"The citizens of the United States," writes Professor Dicey, 
" are certainly neither pedants, nor, in general, theorists ; but 
at the present moment English law is taught, and admirably 
taught, in the colleges of America. . . . The practising counsel 
of Massachusetts would undoubtedly tell you that the best 
preparation for practice in court is study in the lecture-rooms 
of Professor Langdell and his colleagues of Harvard Uni- 
versity."^ 

The Law School was founded in 1817, but down to 1829 it 
was little more than a shadow. In that year Nathan Dane 
endowed a new professorship from the money which he had 
made by his " once famous Abridgi7ient of Americaji Law^ 
Forty-two years earlier he had drafted that beneficent Ordi- 
nance by which the whole of the great Northwest was kept 
free from the taint of slavery. In his old age he not only 
founded the professorship, but he founded it on the condition 
that Judge Story first filled the chair. Even he, full of hope 
though he was, could hardly have foreseen the full measure of 
the benefit of this foundation and this condition, which were 

1 Harvard University^ by F. BoUes, p. 68. 

2 Can English Laiv be TatigJit at the Universities ? by A. V. Dicey, 
Vinerian Professor of English Law in the University of Oxford, 1883, p. 28. 




►J 

< 
a: 



D 

< 



XIV. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 255 



to turn an eminent judge into a great jurist. If Story had 
never filled a Professor's chair, in all likelihood we should never 
have had his Conflict of Laws, his Equity Jurisprudence, and 
his Law of Agency, — that " series of works which are the best 
of their kind in the Enghsh language." ^ During the whole of 
the year before his appointment " there had not been," I quote 
Story himself, " a single student. There was no Law Library ; 
but a few and imperfect books being there." One long vaca- 
tion he wrote to the most brilliant of his pupils, Charles 
Sumner : — 

" I have given nearly the whole of last term, when not on 
judicial duty, two lectures every day, and even broke in upon 
the sanctity of the dies nan juridicus, Saturday." Of this 
daring innovation we have an account from the author of Two 
Years before the Mast. The judge used to make his " boys " 
— "'my boys' he always called his pupils " — argue cases 
before him. " To compel a recitation on Saturday afternoon," 
writes Dana, " would have caused a rebellion. If a Moot-court 
had been forced upon the Law School, no one would have 
attended. At the close of a term there was one more case than 
there was an afternoon to hear it in, unless we took Saturday. 
Judge Story said : " ' Gentlemen, the only time we can hear this 
case is Saturday afternoon. This is dies non, and no one is 
obhged or expected to attend. I am to hold Court in Boston 
until two o'clock. I will ride directly out, take a hasty dinner, 
and be here by half-past three o'clock, and hear the case, if you 
are willing.' He looked round the school for a reply. We felt 
ashamed, in our own business, where we were alone interested, 
to be outdone in zeal and labour by this aged and distinguished 

1 Can English Latv be Taught at the Universities ? by A. V. Dicey 
Vinerian Professor of English Law in the University of Oxford, 1883, p. 29. 



256 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

man, to whom the case was but child's play, a tale twice told, 
and who was himself pressed down by almost incredible labours. 
The proposal was unanimously accepted. The judge was on 
the spot at the hour, the school was never more full, and he sat 
until late in the evening, hardly a man leaving the room." ^ 

Among the pupils in 1838 was Lowell. " I am reading Black- 
stone," he wrote, "with as good a grace and as few wry faces as I 
may." Eight months later he could write more cheerfully. "I 
begin to like the law. And therefore it is quite interesting. I am 
determined that I will like it, and therefore I do'''^ On Story's 
death, in 1845, the school numbered bne hundred and sixty- 
five students, who had flocked to his teaching not only from 
New England, but from almost every State in the Union. 
During the sixteen years in which he filled the chair he gave 
to the world all his treatises on the law, filling no less than 
thirteen volumes. He had hoped that his vacant chair would 
be filled by Charles Sumner ; but that young orator had shown 
far too radical a spirit to be acceptable to Harvard as it was in 
those days.^ Story's colleagues and successors were many of 
them men of great eminence. Among them were Simon Green- 
leaf, Joel Parker, Benjamin R. Curtis, Theophilus Parsons, and 
Emory Washburn. Nevertheless, in 1869, twenty- four years 
after Story's death, the number of students had fallen to one 
hundred and fifteen. In January, 1870, a man was appointed 
to the chair which Story had first filled, who has made as deep a 
mark as the great jurist himself, not only on the Harvard Law 
School, but on the theory and practice of legal education 
generally. He was one of the great lawyers, who, either by the 

^Life of Joseph Story, II. 38, 299, 320, 554. 
2 Letters of J. R. Lozvell, L 33, 45. 
^ Life of Charles Sumner^ III. 11. 



XIV. HARVARD COLLEGE. ISl 

unkindness of fortune or by the want of one or more of the 
lower quaUties of the mind, had never been a great advocate. 
" At the bar of New York, of which for more than fifteen years 
he had been a member, not many could be found who had even 
heard of him ; he had rarely been seen in the Courts." ^ Presi- 
dent Eliot, in his address on the Law School Day at the great 
Commemoration in 1886, gives the following account of his 
appointment : " I remembered that when I was a Junior in 
College, in the year 1851-52, and used to go often in the early 
evening to the room of a friend who was in the Divinity School, 
I there heard a young man who was making the notes to 
Pai'sons on Contracts talk about law. He was generally eating 
his supper at the time, standing up in front of the fire and eating 
with good appetite a bowl of brown bread and milk. I was a 
mere boy, only eighteen years old ; but it was given to me to 
understand that I was listening to a man of genius. In the 
year 1870 I recalled the remarkable quality of that young man's 
expositions, sought him in New York, and induced him to be- 
come Dane Professor. So he became Professor Langdell. He 
then told me, in 1870, a great many of the things he has told 
you this afternoon. He told me that law was a science ; I was 
quite prepared to believe it. He told me that the way to study 
a science was to go to the original sources. I knew that was 
true, for I had been brought up in the science of chemistry 
myself; and one of the first rules of a conscientious student of 
science is never to take a fact or a principle out of second-hand 
treatises, but to go to the original memoir of the discoverer of 
that fact or principle. Out of these two fundamental propo- 
sitions — that law is a science, and that a science is to be 
studied in its sources — there gradually grew, first, a new 

1 The Green Bag, January, 1889, p. 17. 



258 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

method of teaching law ; and, secondly, a reconstruction of the 
curriculum of the school." ^ 

The method of construction pursued by Story and Greenleaf 
and their successors had been " oral lectures illustrating and 
explaining a previously prescribed text-reading, with more or 
less examination thereon." No care had ever been taken at 
any time to exclude those whose ignorance unfitted them for 
the teaching of a university.^ There was only one course of 
studies, and it lasted two years. The students, therefore, of 
every second year entered on it when it was half-way through. 
" This system," writes President Eliot, " was only justified by 
poverty, and the convenient, though unsound, theory that there 
is neither beginning nor end to the law, neither fundamental 
principles or natural development."^ The ignorant students 
were henceforth to be excluded by an entrance examination in 
Latin or French, in Blackstone's Commentaries (exclusive of 
editor's notes) , and in English spelhng and composition. Those, 
however, who had taken the degree of Bachelor of Arts at any 
recognized university were admitted without any test. The 
course of instruction was lengthened from eighteen months, first 
to two years and later on to three. No one can enter on the 
studies of the second year who has not passed his examinations 
in the studies of the first year, or on the studies of the third 
year who has not passed in the studies of the second year. 
Nevertheless, the degree of Bachelor of Laws is conferred after 
a two years' residence on those who pass in the entire course of 
three years. Cum laiide is added to the degree of all who 
show " distinguished excellence." Twelve such distinctions are 

1 Harvard University, 2^oth Anniversary., p. 97. 

2 The Green Bag, pp. 17, 18. 

* Higher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 135. 



XIV. HARVARD COLLEGE. 259 

on the average gained each year. In 1893, seventy-three 
students in all graduated.^ 

Far beyond all the other changes which followed on Pro- 
fessor Langdell's appointment, was the revolution made in 
the method of teaching. What this revolution was we have 
described in his own words. In his address at the Commemo- 
ration of 1886, he said : — 

" It was indispensable to establish at least two things : first, that law is 
a science; secondly, that all the available materials of that science are 
contained in printed books. If law be not a science, a university will 
best consult its own dignity in declining to teach it. If it be not a 
science, it is a species of handicraft, and may best be learned by serving 
an apprenticeship to one who practises it. If it be a science, it will 
scarcely be disputed that it is one of the greatest and most difficult of 
sciences, and that it needs all the light that the most enhghtened seat of 
learning can throw upon it. Again, law can only be learned and taught 
in a university by means of printed books. If, therefore, there are other 
and better means of teaching and learning law than printed books, or if 
printed books can only be used to the best advantage in connection with 
other means, — for instance, the work of a lawyer's office, or attendance 
upon the proceedings of Courts of Justice, — it must be confessed that 
such means cannot be provided by a university. But if printed books are 
the ultimate sources of all legal knowledge; if every student who would 
obtain any mastery of law^ as a science must resort to these ultimate 
sources; and if the only assistance which it is possible for the learner to 
receive, is such as can be afforded by teachers who have travelled the same 
road before him — then a university, and a university alone, can furnish 
every possible facility for teaching and learning law. I wish to emphasize 
the fact that a teacher of law should be a person who accompanies his pupils 
on a road which is new to them, but with which he is well acquainted from 
having often travelled it before. What qualifies a person, therefore, to teach 
law is not experience in the work of a lawyer's office, not experience in deal- 
ing with men, not experience in the trial or argument of causes, — not ex- 
perience, in short, in using law, but experience in learning law; not the 
experience of the Roman advocate or of the Roman preetor, still less of the 
Roman procurator, but the experience of the Roman juris-consult." ^ 

1 Catalogue, pp. 346-49, 511. 

2 Harvard University, 2^oth Anniversary, p. 85. 



260 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

From an article on the Harvard Law School, by Mr. Louis D. 
Brandeis, one of the foremost among the younger lawyers of 
Boston, I extract the following account of the method by 
which Professor Langdell " teaches the student to think in a 
legal manner in accordance with the principles of the particu- 
lar branch of the law." Mr. Brandeis begins by quoting the 
following passage from the Professor's Select Cases on Con- 
tracts, the first of a series published for the use of the School. 

" Law, considered as a science, consists of certain principles or doc- 
trines. To have such a mastery of these as to be able to apply them with 
constant facility and certainty to the ever-tangled skein of human affairs, 
is what constitutes a true lawyer; and hence to acquire that mastery 
should be the business of every earnest student of the law. Each of these 
doctrines has arrived at its present state by slow degrees ; in other words, 
it is a growth, extending in many cases through centuries. This growth is 
to be traced in the main through a series of cases; and much the shortest 
and best, if not the only way of mastering the doctrine effectually is by 
studying the cases in which it is embodied. But the cases which are use- 
ful and necessary for this purpose at the present day bear an exceedingly 
small proportion to all that have been reported. The vast majority are 
useless and worse than useless for any purpose of systematic study. More- 
over, the number of fundamental legal doctrines is much less than is com- 
monly supposed; the many different guises in which the same doctrine is 
constantly making its appearance, and the great extent to which legal 
treatises are a repetition of each other, being the cause of much misap- 
prehension. If these doctrines could be so classified and arranged that 
each should be found in its proper place, and nowhere else, they would 
cease to be formidable from their number." 

"These books of cases," Mr. Brandeis goes on to say, "are the tools 
with which the student supplies himself as he enters upon his work. 
Take, for instance, the subject of * Mutual Assent' in contracts. A score 
of cases covering a century, contained in about one hundred and fifty 
pages and selected from the English reports, the decisions of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, and the highest courts of New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Massachusetts, arranged in chronological order, show the devel- 
opment of its leading principles. Before coming to the lecture-room, the 
student, by way of preparation, has studied — he does not merely read — 
say from two to six cases. In the selection of cases used as a text-book, 



XIV. HARVARD COLLEGE. 261 

the head notes appearing in the regular reports are omitted, and the 
student, besides mastering the facts, has endeavoured for himself to deduce 
from the decision the principle involved. In the class-room some student 
is called upon by the Professor to state the case, and then follows an 
examination of the opinion of the court, an analysis of the arguments of 
counsel, a criticism of the reasoning on which the decision is based, a 
careful discrimination between what was decided and what is a dictum 
merely. To use the expression of one of the Professors, the case is " evis- 
cerated." Other students are either called upon for their opinions or 
volunteer them, — the Professor throughout acting largely as moderator. 
When the second case is taken up, material for comparison is furnished; 
and with each additional authority that is examined, the opportunity for 
comparison and for generalization grows. When the end of the chapter 
of cases is reached, the student stands possessed of the principles in their 
full development." ^ 

Mr. Brandeis describes "the ardour of the students. Pro- 
fessor Ames, writing of the School ten years ago, said : ' Indeed, 
one speaks far within bounds in saying that the spirit of work 
and enthusiasm which now prevails is without parallel in the 
history of any department of the University.' What was true 
then is at least equally true now. The students live in an 
atmosphere of legal thought. Their interest is at fever heat." 
One of the Professors informed me that nine out of ten of his 
pupils study hard. If they had had a period of idleness at the 
University, it was in their Arts course. The entrance into the 
Law School they looked upon as the entrance into the real 
work of hfe. The idlers are w"eeded out each year by an 
examination ; but of these there are always very few. 

There is the freest access to a noble Law Library of thirty- 
three thousand volumes. On it in each year between 1870 and 
1890 about three thousand dollars (^613) were spent. Great 
as this annual expenditure was, it has not been found sufficient. 
In the last three years it has been nearly doubled.^ In 1892 

1 The Green Bag, January, 1889, p. 19. ^ Catalogue, p. 351. 



262 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

it was thought needful to add '* another copy of every set of 
Enghsh and American reports which is used to any consider- 
able extent." In the summer vacation of that year the Libra- 
rian took a trip to England and purchased nearly fourteen 
hundred volumes of English reports. Before long "the Library 
will have three copies of all the more important sets of English 
and American reports, and of several sets it will have four 
copies."^ "We have constantly inculcated the idea," said 
Professor Langdell, "that the Library is the proper workshop 
of Professors and students alike ; that it is to us all that the 
Laboratories of the University are to the chemists and physi- 
cists, all that the Museum of Natural History is to the zoolo- 
gists, all that the Botanical Garden is to the botanists." ^ 

In two different courts the students are trained both in law 
and in arguing, — in Moot Courts held by the Professors, and 
in Club Courts conducted entirely by the students. "The 
Club Courts have generally two sets of members — the Junior 
Court consisting of eight members selected from the first-year 
Class, and the Senior Court consisting of nine members selected 
from the second-year Class. At each sitting a case is argued 
by two of the members as counsel, the rest sitting as judges. 
In the Junior Court a member of the Senior Court sits as Chief 
Justice. The cases are regularly presented upon the pleadings ; 
briefs are prepared, arguments made, and opinions — some- 
times in writing — delivered by each of the judges. The cases 
are prepared with quite as much thoroughness as any work 
that is done at the School."^ 

Nothing better shows the excellence of the teaching than the 

1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 143. 

2 Harvard University, 2^oth Anniversary, p, 86. 
^ The Green Bag, p. 23. 



XIV. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 263 



position held by the Harvard Law Review. It is managed 
wholly by the students ; their notes on legal topics are, I am 
told, some of its best features. Among its contributors it 
reckons not a few of the foremost legal thinkers both of Eng- 
land and America. It is about to enter on its eighth volume ; 
it has accumulated a reserve fund, and is in a perfectly sound 
financial condition. 

The Faculty is composed of six Professors, two Assistant- 
Professors, two Lecturers and one Instructor, by whom forty- 
eight lectures are delivered every week. They are not men 
engaged in other occupations, who dwell at a distance, and 
hurry down from time to time to give one or two hasty lect- 
ures. They all live close to the College, and " they almost 
without exception devote their entire time to the work of the 
School, and the personal needs of the students." " I have 
seen," said President Eliot, ''four Professors added to the 
Faculty of Law since Professor Langdell's accession ; if genius 
be a remarkable capacity for work, they are all men of 
genius." ^ 

It is the great desire, not only of the Governing Bodies in 
general, but also of the Faculty of the Law School, that all 
who study in it should first have graduated in Arts. In Oxford 
so strongly is it felt by some of the Law Professors that the 
School of Literae Humaniores best disciplines the mind, that, 
if a man destined for the Bar has to choose between it and the 
Law School, they always advise him to follow the wider instead 
of the narrower course. He had better, they think, learn all 
his law in a barrister's chambers than miss the best part of a 
liberal training. Professor Goodwin, with all his admiration 
of the learning and the research of German universities, yet 

1 Harvard University, 2^oth Anniversary, p. 98. 



264 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

sees how in regard to " a purely liberal education " they are 
surpassed by those of England and America. "A German," 
he writes, " passes by a single leap from the hfe of a school- 
boy to that of a man who is (or ought to be) beginning the 
serious work of life. He knows no period of transition such 
as is open to the English and American youth, when his ship is 
loosed from shore but is still in harbour, when he is in the 
world but not exactly of the world, when he has a right to 
spend his time in becoming acquainted with the great heritage 
which has been bequeathed him before he is called to admin- 
ister it and improve it for his successors. To this habit of our 
English race of taking a period of rest combined with most 
active work, of active work free from the responsibilites of real 
life, between boyhood and manhood, we owe much that gives 
the English and American college-bred man his distinct char- 
acter, which often makes him a more cultivated man than one 
of a different stamp with perhaps far greater learning." ^ 

True as this is, unless our students who are intended for the 
Bar or the Solicitor's Office stay on at our universities and 
study law as a science, their education will always be maimed 
and imperfect. We must follow in Professor Langdell's steps, 
and establish a School in which that natural impatience which 
comes over the best minds, by the end of their undergraduates' 
course, to enter on the real work of life, shall be satisfied. To 
do this, our short terms and frequent vacations must come to 
an end. The real work of life is not carried on in twenty-five 
weeks of each year divided into three periods, separated by 
vacations, the shortest of which lasts at least a month. There 
must be, as at Harvard, the long sweep of work from the end 
of September to the end of June, broken only by a few days' 

1 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. t^"^. 



XIV. HARVARD COLLEGE. 265 

rest at Christmas and Easter. The gain will be twofold — a 
gain in the steadiness of work and in its amount. By the end 
of his three years' course the student will have had, not 
seventy-two weeks of study broken up into nine periods, but 
one hundred and eleven weeks divided into three. When 
once we have a well-organized School and a large staff of Pro- 
fessors all inspired with that spirit which animates these New 
England teachers, and all gifted with that genius which consists 
in a remarkable capacity for work, we shall soon have a body 
of students equally inspired and equally gifted. The School 
will grow with the rapidity of which Harvard boasts ; in the 
ten years between 1882 and 1892, it saw its students of law 
increase in number from one hundred and thirty-one to three 
hundred and ninety-four. Stricter measures which were taken 
two years ago to exclude incompetent men have, for a time, 
caused a slight check ; in the present year there are but three 
hundred and fifty-three on the Hst. Of these rather more than 
seven in every ten have taken a degree in Arts. In 1891-92, 
for the first time, the Harvard graduates were outnumbered 
by the graduates of all the other universities combined. Yale 
sent twenty-one. The average age at entrance was a few weeks 
under twenty-three.^ In America, as in England, youths at the 
present day make too long a stay at school, entering upon 
their university life at least a year too late. 

Daniel Webster, in one of his speeches, looks forward to the 
time when America shall repay to Europe the great debt of 
learning which she owes her. The repayment to England has 
already begun ; all that we have to do is to stretch out her 
hands and to gather in the fruits of Harvard's experience in 
the method of teaching law. 

1 Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 69. 



CHAPTER XV. 

The Lawrence Scientific School. — Special Students. 

THE growth of the Scientific School has been more rapid 
even than that of the Law School. "It has to-day- 
twenty times as many students as it had seven years ago." In 
1886 they were but fourteen in number; now they are two 
hundred and eighty.^ It was founded in 1847 by a noble gift 
of Mr. Abbott Lawrence, but it was long in taking root. It 
was in the department of Natural History that it made its first 
great start. " Nothing," says Professor Goodwin, " rouses a 
stronger opposition to any scheme for university reform than 
the charge that it is foreign."^ Happily there is not appa- 
rently the same jealousy of foreigners; for it was the Swiss 
Agassiz, who had been trained in the best methods of the great 
German universities, who by his genius, his ardent love of 
knowledge and his persuasive eloquence, stirred up the citizens 
of Boston and the Legislature of the Commonwealth to found 
the University Museum. It would have been in itself a noble 
monument to his memory, but to render it still worthier his son, 
Professor Alexander Agassiz, has laid out on it at his own cost 
more than a quarter of a milhon of dollars. " There is," says 
President Eliot, " no institution in the world which offers richer 
and more varied opportunities for the study of Natural History 

1 Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 7. 

2 The Present and Future of Harvard College, p. 21. 

266 




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CHAP. XV. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 267 



than the Lawrence Scientific School."^ Nevertheless, owing 
apparently to defects in organization, the number of students 
had of late years fallen away. Up to 1890 it had been "as 
distinct a professional school as the Law School or the Medical 
School. Since its consolidation with the other two depart- 
ments under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, it has grown 
with great rapidity. Its students work side by side under one 
Faculty, play on the same teams, row in the same boats, and 
mingle freely in the same societies." ^ Of the two hundred 
and eighty students, one hundred and forty-two entered with 
the intention of taking the degree of Bachelor of Science, 
while the rest either resorted to the School for the sake of 
pursuing some particular study, or did not propose to go 
through the four years' course.'^ The entrance examination is 
easier for the young students of Science than for one who 
intends to take his degree in Arts. On the other hand, when 
he is once in, more work is required of him, and more is freely 
done. " As a rule," says the President, " there is more of the 
spirit of hard work in the Scientific Schools or Courses than 
in the Colleges or College Departments of Universities. The 
motive of earning a livelihood presses more constantly, and 
the students feel more distinctly that they are beginning their 
hfe work.""* The candidates for a degree work at one of 
" seven compactly arranged groups of subjects." All either at 
entrance or, if they prefer, at the end of their course must 
pass an examination in EngHsh. Those taking their degree 
this year have to satisfy the examiners that they have " read 

1 LListory of Lligher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, pp. 117-18. 

2 Harvard University^ by F. Bolles, p. 59. 

3 Catalogue, p. 246; Annual Reports, 1892-93, p. 104. 
* Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 22; lb. 1892-93, p. 11. 



268 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

intelligently Shakespeare's Julius Ccesa?' and Merchant of 
Venice^ Scott's Lady of the Lake, Arnold's Sohi-ab and Rttstum, 
the " Sir Roger de Coverley Papers " in The Spectator, Macau- 
lay's Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham, Emerson's Ameri- 
can Scholar, Irving's Sketch-Book, Scott's Abbot^ Dickens's 
David Copperfieldr^ 

This School is open to undergraduates in general ; some of 
the courses counting for the degree, either of Bachelor of Arts 
or of Bachelor of Medicine. Dr. Goodale, Professor of 
Natural History, told me that last year two hundred students 
in all attended his classes on Botany. His lecture-room is 
admirably fitted up. In one part of the Museum he showed 
me long cases full of wonderful imitations of plants in glass, 
so perfect that they stand the test of the microscope. They 
are the productions of a father and son named Blaschka, who 
belong to a family long settled in Germany, which for many 
generations has produced skilful workers in glass. I was told 
that when the son paid a visit to America, and saw in the Har- 
vard Museum these flowers thus displayed, and his name and 
his father's inscribed on the walls, the tears came into his eyes. 
One of the Professor's pupils had lately made a minute exami- 
nation of the weeds on a small plot of ground. Scarcely a 
single one of nearly seventy varieties was of American origin. 
The European seeds get as great a mastery over the native 
seeds as the white men got over the red. 

For the last twenty years, during six weeks of the Long 
Vacation, the College has been open to students, whether they 
are members of the University or outsiders. The Summer 
Courses, as they are called, include instruction in German, 
French, English, Anglo-Saxon, engineering, physics, chemistry, 

1 Harvard University^ by F. Bolles, p. 58; Catalogue, p. 247. 



XV. HARVARD COLLEGE. 269 

botany, geology, mathematics, and physical training. In the 
Medical School, moreover, " courses in many branches of 
practical and scientific medicine are given." Last year three 
hundred and forty-six students in all attended, of whom a large 
proportion were teachers. The summer school vacation, it 
must be remembered, is much longer in the United States than 
in England. Of these three hundred and forty-six, two hun- 
dred and forty-three were men and one hundred and three 
were women. ^ I doubt whether at Oxford, in the Long Vaca- 
tion Extension Lectures, the men form a tenth part of the 
whole number. The work done at Harvard spreads over a 
much longer time and is more serious. There is nothing of a 
literary picnic about these Summer Courses. The teaching is 
mainly done by " the younger instructors and assistants who 
have become familiar with the ground covered during their 
regular labours in term-time under the guidance of the older 
teachers in the same department. A few Assistant- Professors 
take part in the work ; but no Professors — except perhaps by 
giving a few lectures during the progress of some course in which 
they are interested." Some of the instruction given is of a 
high order. Thus in history this year one of the Courses " is 
open only to experienced teachers and students already well 
prepared in American History. They will do daily work in 
the Library on a special subject under the direction of the In- 
structor." The ordinary fee for each Course is twenty dollars 
(^4. T. 8.), but for one or two of the subjects so much as thirty 
or even thirty-five dollars (^6. 2. 6. ; £,']. 3. o.) is charged.- 

1 Of the 354 names in the Catalogue, 249 are those of men and 105 of 
women. Eight are inserted in more than one list. I have assumed that 
of these eight six were men and two women. Catalogue, pp. 446, 538. 

2 Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 39 ; Catalogue, pp. 118, 401, 445. 



270 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Harvard, in her eagerness to promote learning, freely receives 
students who for want of means or time cannot go through the 
ordinary four years' course, but who, nevertheless, wish to pursue 
some particular study at a university. These men are known 
as Special Students. Before admittance they must give proof 
that they have learning enough to profit by the teaching. In 
their work they are under the control of the Committee of 
Advisers, and in respect to discipline they are on the same 
footing as the ordinary undergraduates. A watchful eye has to 
be kept over this department lest it should be used by those 
who look upon a university as a great and glorious play-ground. 
Idlers are sent away. To those who do well Certificates of 
Proficiency are given on Commencement Day. This year there 
are one hundred and sixty-two of these students.^ I hope that 
the day will shortly come when in our English Universities also 
we shall freely admit in every department the eager learner, 
however great may be his ignorance of certain subjects. When 
I consider the scores and scores of young men who throng the 
Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, who are no more fit to be 
in a university than a cow is fit to be in a garden, I am amazed 
at the care which is taken to bar out many a promising student. 
This barrier is raised by those who have never looked upon a 
university but as a place where a degree is earned, and on a 
degree but as a distinction inseparably connected with some 
knowledge of Greek and Latin. In their eyes education is 
nothing but a narrow and well-beaten track which all men have 
followed or ought to have followed. Those who have travelled 
along it, whether freely or cudgelled at every step, are alone fit 
for the liberal studies of a university. They may be dull, gross, 
lazy, haters of knowledge, scorners of learned men ; their chief 

1 Catalogue, pp. 187, 207; Annual Reports, 1891-92, p. 75. 



XV. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 271 



delight may be in the strength of their own or of other men's 
legs ; they may, unless under compulsion, read nothing but the 
sporting newspapers ; they may be ever startling the studious 
cloisters by their boisterous ignorance ; " flown with insolence 
and wine," they may do shameful wrong to ancient seats of 
learning, nevertheless before them the barriers have been 
rightly lowered, because in the ten long years spent at school 
they have been birched into Greek and Latin enough to carry 
them, with the help of the " crammer," through their examina- 
tions. While such men not only disgrace the university but 
lower the general standard, others are shut out who would have 
brought to it new interests and modes of Ufe and fresh thoughts. 
How often does it happen that a young man who, like Gold- 
smith, flowers late, suddenly wakens up to all the delight and 
hopefulness of knowledge ! Some one study above all he longs 
to pursue. He seeks such aid as he can get, and learns all that 
he can from books and chance instructors. The time comes 
when he feels the need of all the means of learning which a 
great university alone can give. He strives to enter, but he is 
coldly repulsed. He is told that if in his ignorance of Greek or 
Latin, or perchance of our English arithmetic with its ridiculous 
tables of weight and measures, he were let in, a blow would be 
struck at the whole system of public education, over which the 
University presumes to watch with all the conceit of a hen over 
a brood of duckhngs. Surely it will be time enough to exclude 
those who only wish to learn something and not everything 
when all have been excluded who so far from wishing to learn 
everything learn nothing. Let every one who wishes to enter 
the University satisfy the Faculty of any single department that 
he has knowledge and capacity enough to profit by the teaching, 
the door should at once be flung open to him. If he shows him- 



272 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xv. 

self unworthy of his great opportunities, let him be quickly sent 
packing. When once he is inside, mixing with men of great 
and varied knowledge, he will see his sky widening on all sides 
and will find fresh longings for knowledge springing up in him. 
He should be placed on the same footing as the other under- 
graduates — entitled to enjoy the same privileges and advant- 
ages, and subject to the same discipline. If the course of 
studies that he pursues is too narrow, let no degree be con- 
ferred upon him. Nevertheless, as at Harvard, he should re- 
ceive a certificate of proficiency, which should testify, not only 
that he has acquired a certain amount of knowledge, but 
— which is of scarcely less importance — that he has acquired 
it during his residence in a learned society. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Radcliffe College. — The Harvard Annex. 

ON April 23, 1849, Longfellow recorded in his Journal: 
^' We have had at Faculty meeting an application from 
a young lady to enter College as a regular student." ^ Who 
she was, and what answer was sent to her request, we are not 
told. In some remote day the antiquary will search the 
archives of the College in the hope of discovering her applica- 
tion, and of making known to the world the name of the girl, 
who, a full half century in advance of her time, took this 
daring step. Even now, much as has been done, no woman 
can enter Harvard as a regular student. This young lady will 
be looked on as the Pilgrim Mother of Radcliffe College, or 
rather, perhaps, as one of the daring adventurers from Norway, 
who first tried to settle on the inhospitable shores of New Eng- 
land. Nearly thirty years later a second young lady came to 
Cambridge, and was fortunate enough to get instruction in 
Greek, Latin, and English from three sound scholars. Professors 
Goodwin, Greenough, and Child. '^ By her ability and enthusi- 
asm for learning, she aroused in her teachers great interest in 
the whole subject of woman's education." - By Mr. Arthur 
Gilman, neither a teacher nor a graduate of Harvard, the sug- 

1 Life ofH. W. Longfellozu, II. 138. 

2 See an article on " Radcliffe College " in the Harvard Graduates' 
Magazine for March, 1894, of which I have made much use in vi'riting 
this chapter. 

T 273 



274 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

gestion was thereupon made " that instruction should be sys- 
tematically and publicly, though unofficially, offered to women 
by the College teachers." He was supported in his proposal 
by the example which had been recently set in England by the 
foundation of Girton College. To the English Cambridge 
the New England Cambridge once more turned her eyes. 
"The proposition," we are told, "might well have seemed 
impracticable, but it was not without the countenance of foreign 
example." A second College for women was soon founded on 
the banks of the Cam, and Oxford quickly followed with her 
two Halls. Not to be left behind in the race, a few ladies of 
the New England Cambridge published a circular in which 
they unfolded their plan for the " Private Collegiate Instruction 
of Women." A sum of fifteen thousand dollars (^3066), 
far too small to found a College, but large enough to try a 
great experiment in education, was subscribed by a few friends. 
The instruction that was offered was not to be " of a lower 
grade than that given to the College," and the entrance exami- 
nation was to be the same as that through which the under- 
graduates had to pass. The teaching of the two sexes was 
to be kept apart. "Thirty-seven Professors and Instructors 
offered courses, and among them many of the most distin- 
guished teachers of the University." In September, 1879, 
twenty-seven students began their work in rooms hired in a 
dwelling-house on the Appian Way. " An extra room was pro- 
vided where students could spend the intervals between reci- 
tations, and in that room some of the Instructors left books 
of reference for their use." 

In the second year the number of students rose to forty- 
seven ; by the third year the Managers felt that they were 
strong enough to form themselves into a Corporation under 



XVI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 275 

the title of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women. 
Mr. Gilman was appointed Secretary, and Mrs. Agassiz, the 
widow of the great naturalist, President. To their wise zeal, 
kept at the same even height from year to year, the success of 
this great cause is largely due. It was not by the long name 
which the Society had chosen for itself that the institution was 
to be known. A nickname sprang up, as nicknames always do 
spring up where brevity has been neglected. The Society for 
the Collegiate Instruction of Women, and the building in 
which its work is done, have long been everywhere known as 
the Harvard Annex, or more briefly as the Annex. By the 
end of the first four years three of the students had finished 
the complete undergraduate course "parallel to that of the 
College, directed by the same teachers, and tested by identical 
examinations. They received, instead of degrees, the certifi- 
cates of the Society, which stated that the holder ' has pur- 
sued a course of study equivalent in amount and quality to 
that for which the degree of Bachelor of Arts is conferred in 
Harvard College, and has passed in a satisfactory manner 
examinations on that course, corresponding to the College 
examinations.' The graduate certificate has ever since been 
in that form." 

By this time the Society had successfully gone through its 
first period of probation, and could now appeal for support to 
the country at large. The appeal should have met with a 
liberal reply, for the need of a higher education of women 
ought to be more strongly felt in the United States than per- 
haps in any other country of the world. The great majority 
of American teachers are women ; in the larger cities, in every 
hundred scarcely ten are men. It is, no doubt, not a little 
owing to this fact, and to the imperfect education which 



276 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

women have hitherto received, that the American schoolboy is 
behind the schoolboys of England, France, and Germany in 
book-learning. In answer to the appeal, not more than sixty- 
seven thousand dollars (;£i3,7oo) was raised — a small sum 
compared with the splendid donations made year after year to 
Harvard for the education of men. Donors and bequeathers 
follow the general fashion and move in one long rut ; giving 
and bequeathing where gifts and bequests have always been 
made. May some millionaire, for once, be touched with orig- 
inality, and make his great gift to this College for Women. 

The students soon became too numerous for the few hired 
rooms in which their work was done. In 1885 an old mansion 
was bought, facing the pleasant Common and close to the 
Washington Elm. Washington's Birthday had been the date of 
the first circular issued six years earlier by the Managers. In 
one of the rooms of this house the poet of the two hundredth 
anniversary of the College had written his Fail- Harva7'd. 
Hitherto the students had had no hfe in common ; they had 
come together to be taught, and had separated when once the 
lesson was over. In their new home, with the great additions 
which before long were made, they were to have an accommo- 
dation not unworthy of a small college. They were still, how- 
ever, to lodge as before, scattered about in private families. 
Their number has grown in fifteen years from twenty-seven to 
two hundred and fifty ; of whom one hundred are taking the 
full undergraduate course of four years. The Academic Board 
is composed of eight of the principal Professors of Harvard, 
together with the President and Secretary of the Society. The 
work of instruction is done by sixty-nine of the Harvard 
teachers, of whom twenty-one are full Professors and fifteen 
Assistant- Professors, 



XVI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 277 

Much as the University has done, it is a pity that it has not 
had the courage to do still more. From all the lecture-rooms, 
from almost all the Laboratories, and from the Medical School 
the women are still excluded. The exclusion from the lecture- 
rooms tells not only against the pupil but against the teacher, 
who has felt the weariness of repeating before a class of young 
women the lecture which perhaps that same morning he had 
delivered before a class of young men. Harvard has not even 
the timid courage which the Managers of our Oxford Halls 
showed from the first. They allowed their girls to enter the 
lecture-rooms of the University Professors and of the College 
Tutors, so long as each set was accompanied by a chaperon. 
It was not the University of Oxford which made this regulation, 
though it is still sometimes enforced by nervous Professors. 
The University, as such, had no fear of its young men as the 
Corporation and Overseers of Harvard apparently have of theirs. 
It was the young women who were watched over, and watched 
mainly by the anxious Boards of their own Halls. To the 
Laboratories in the Oxford Museum they have gone unat- 
tended. This indulgence, I conjecture, was granted because 
no chaperon could be found for love or any reasonable sum of 
money, who would sit patiently in unbroken silence for three or 
four hours together by the side of a young enthusiast, while 
under a microscope she examined the leg of a frog. In the 
last two years there has been a relaxation in these rules, at all 
events in one of the Halls. Two girls or more can now attend 
a lecture without a chaperon. It is only for solitary students 
that a companion must be provided. The need of such com- 
panionship is far greater in Oxford where the lecture-room often 
opens out of the same staircase as the rooms of undergraduates. 
In University College, London, the girls go unchaperoned to the 



278 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

ordinary classes. Three years ago I attended a few of the 
lectures in the University of Geneva, and found the young men 
and women studying together and sitting on the same benches. 
I did not notice the slightest indication of giddiness on the part 
of a single student. What is refused at Harvard with one hand 
is often given with the other. To the College Library the 
women have no admittance ; nevertheless, they have brought 
to the Annex any book which they may need. From the work 
of the Graduate School they are too much cut off; in some 
departments, however, provision has been made for them. 
" The attitude of the students of Harvard College towards the 
Annex students, and of the latter towards the former, appears," 
we are told, *' to be that of unconcern." Whatever unconcern 
there may be in the attitude of the young people, and however 
admirable this unconcern may be, I trust that the unconcern of 
the Overseers and Corporation and of every member of the 
Faculty will before long entirely disappear, and that the whole 
of the noble foundation will be thrown open to men and women 
alike. Above all, may the women be admitted to the Medical 
School, from which, by an illiberahty unworthy of the age, they 
seem to be entirely shut out. 

A great advance has this year been made — an advance 
which before long must sweep away all these idle distinctions. 
Hitherto the Annex has in no way been officially recognized by 
the University. No mention of it is made in the Catalogue ; 
none even in those two pamphlets on life at Harvard by the 
late Secretary to the University, from which I have frequently 
quoted. The President and the Deans of the Faculties know 
nothing of it in their Reports. The good they do, they do by 
stealth and blush to have it fame. Henceforth the Annex is 
openly and avowedly to be attached to the University, though 



XVI. . HARVARD COLLEGE. 279 

by a bond somewhat loose in appearance, but which will most 
certainly gradually tighten and be made indissoluble. It will 
be a corporation in itself, thus holding the same position as one 
of our Oxford or Cambridge Colleges. It will have the entire 
control of its funds and of the discipline of its students. The 
instruction, the examinations, and the conferring of degrees will 
be in the hands of the President and Fellows of the University. 
They will be " the Visitors of the Corporation. No instructor 
or examiner will be appointed, employed, or retained with- 
out their approval." The diplomas of the degrees that are 
conferred will be the diplomas of the Corporation, approved of 
by the Corporation of Harvard, countersigned by the President 
with the seal of the University affixed. It is not avowedly the 
University degree that the Corporation and Overseers are yet 
prepared to offer. They have not been able to screw their 
courage up to that point ; but they are much more than half- 
way across the stream, and onwards they must go. There is 
fear, we are told, that the full Harvard degree would attract so 
large a number of women that the new College would be over- 
whelmed. I am reminded how nearly sixty years ago our 
Postmaster-General opposed the scheme of penny postage be- 
cause the number of letters would be so large that the walls 
of the Post-Office would burst. The letters, he seemed to think, 
should be kept down to the size of the building, and not the 
building enlarged to the number of the letters. In the present 
case where can the danger lie? These young women whom 
the fearful eye of authority sees flocking in from every State in 
the Union would have no power to force admittance. A moder- 
ate increase in the difficulty of the entrance examination would, 
as effectually even as a pestilence, thin their ranks. No more 
need be received each year than the buildings can conveniently 



280 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

hold. A second objection is raised that " to make anything 
like an impartial sharing of the resources of the University 
would cripple the present work for men." The mere act of 
conferring the full Harvard degree would not cripple the 
resources, neither would they be crippled if the women were 
to attend the lectures. Whenever there is not room for them, 
in those few cases the lecture would have to be repeated, as 
indeed it is repeated for them now. Generally, however, they 
would only help to fill empty benches. In the Laboratories 
there might be greater difficulties, but in 1892, of which year I 
have the Report of the Society, there were but four students in 
Chemistry and three in Advanced Zoology. The third objec- 
tion has far more force. " It is not clear that the opinion of the 
graduates and friends of the University is yet so settled as to 
justify this departure from the established constitution of the 
University." The Corporation and the Overseers cannot safely 
move much faster than is approved of by the general sense of 
that part of the community which is most highly educated. If 
the country is not yet ripe for the change, the sure course of 
events must be patiently awaited. At the same time, in hasten- 
ing in the coming of this good time the University should take 
the lead. This hitherto she has not done. She is behind many 
of the leading American Universities. She is far behind almost 
all the countries of the Old World. Even Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, weighted as they are with the conservatism of six centu- 
ries, have outstripped her. Germany alone is surpassed by her 
in her unwillingness to let women enjoy the same opportunities 
as men, not only in the great race of life, but in the far nobler 
but uncontentious struggle to win that knowledge and those 
qualities of the mind which give life its fulness and perfection. 
Who can wonder that this new constitution, when it was 



XVI. HARVARD COLLEGE. 281 

promulgated, met with strong opposition? All those who will 
not allow that half a loaf is better than no bread, were in arms. 
Petitions were presented to the Legislature of the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts against the bill, by which the new 
powers were to be conferred. In the State House, on February 
28 of this year, both parties appeared before the Committee on 
Education. Happily, in the interval, much had been done by 
discussion in the newspapers to show that, though not a little 
was left to do, a great advance had been made. The way to 
conciliation was opened. Some concession was made, and the 
opposition was withdrawn. Woman's reason triumphed over 
woman's rights ; with time the rights will be granted to the 
last jot. Let those who are still doubtful and unsatisfied, 
take courage from the words spoken at the great Harvard Com- 
memoration, nearly seven years ago, by a graceful writer, the 
late George William Curtis : " Whoever is happy enough to be 
here to-day, must acknowledge that to all other good fortunes 
must now be added, not only the felicity of coming here to 
salute the Mother upon her two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary, but of finding her two hundred and fifty times fairer 
and stronger and more beloved than ever before. Still more, 
while he walks about this Zion, telling her towers, marking her 
bulwarks, and counting her palaces, if he catches a glimpse of 
the modest Annex, he is still happier in knowing that as his 
ever-young Mother starts to complete her third century, the 
spell of old tradition which commanded her to bring forth 
men-children only, is broken forever." ^ 

For the new College a name had to be sought. The full 
title was far too long and the Annex was without dignity. A 
friend of mine overheard an argument carried on in a train by 

1 Harvard University, 2^oih Anniversary, p. 309. 



282 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

two girls about the merits of Wellesley College and the Annex. 
Wellesley College stands in a park of three hundred acres on the 
edge of a small lake. When it was opened, its generous founder, 
Mr. H. F. Durant, a New England lawyer, said that his three 
hundred women students should each one have an acre of 
ground to herself to dance on. So rapidly has the College 
grown, that with much less than half an acre they would now 
have to be content. With all its great superiority of grounds 
and buildings, it is at present behind the humble Annex in the 
instruction which it imparts. Its teachers, with scarcely an 
exception, are women, few of whom can have had the full 
advantages of a University education, while the students at 
Cambridge are taught by a body of University Professors, who, 
for ability, learning, and zeal, are unsurpassed by any in 
America. It was not, however, in these matters that the 
champion of Wellesley in the train tried to strike the balance. 
It was the name of the Annex, that by its lightness turned the 
scales as she held them up. She was not going to be " Nico- 
demused into nothing." She thought, no doubt, of the 
Wellesley " Yell." An Annex " Yell " would be an absurdity. 
It would die away in the throat and mock the young enthusiast 
who should try to raise it. 

Some of the friends of the infant College that was awaiting its 
christening would have called it Martha Washington, after the 
great Washington's wife. But to a "Yell," Martha Washing- 
ton is not easily harmonized. Moreover, the very name 
Martha does not come with the right association of ideas. It 
does not awaken the right thoughts and recall the right 
memories. It raises before the mind the picture of a College 
of Housewifery ; it tells nothing of that good part which the 
real student chooses, which shall never be taken away. What 



XVI. 



HARVAkD COLLEGE. 283 



had Martha Washington to do with learning ? Her skill in 
making a goose-pie was, I dare say, as indisputable as the skill 
of the wife of the Vicar of Wakefield ; but education, like 
argument, she left to others. While all the "gossips" were 
ransacking their heads for a suitable name, it fortunately hap- 
pened that an antiquary, Mr. A. M. Davis, in his researches 
into the beginnings of Harvard, discovered that one of the 
earhest benefactors of the infant College was Lady Mowlson, 
the widow of Sir Thomas Mowlson, Lord Mayor of London 
in 1634. Her maiden name was Ann Radcliffe. About the 
year 1643, "out of Christian desire to advance good learning, 
she gave one hundred pounds to be improved in New England, 
in the best way for the help of some poor scholar or scholars in 
the College, and to be settled for that use."^ How staunch a 
Puritan she was, is shown by her subscribing in May of the fol- 
lowing year no less than six hundred pounds towards the sum 
of twenty thousand pounds sent to the Scottish army which 
had marched into England in support of the Parliamentary 
forces. - It is after this woman, animated as she was by a love 
of liberty and of learning, that the College for Women is to be 
called. Like the names of Harvard and Cambridge, it binds 
the great New England University to the old country by a 
fresh link. To the Oxonian it comes with a peculiarly pleasant 
sound, recalling, as it does, his own Radcliffe Library. 

RadcUffe College is far from being even now on a perfect 
equahty with Harvard. She is not as yet one of the members 
of the great University. She no longer indeed gathers up the 

1 Quoted from a letter by the Rev. Thomas Weld, dated Gates Head, 
Jan. 2, 1649, given in Ann Radcliffe — Lady Mozulson, by A. M. Davis. 
Reprinted from the Neiv England Magazine, February, 1894, p. 773. 

2 Lb. p. 780. 



284 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xvi. 

crumbs that are thrown to her. She has her seat at the well- 
furnished table, but it is below the salt. She has time on her 
side. Her full day will come \vhen she is ripe for it. Mean- 
while she must turn to the old foundation, as Portia turned to 
her Lord Bassanio, and with her say that she 

" Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd; 
Happy in this, she is not yet so old 
But she may learn; happier than this, 
She is not bred so dull but she can learn; 
Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit 
Commits itself to yours to be directed. 
As from her Lord, her Governor, her King." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The Library. — Gifts from England. — The Fire of 1 764. — Gore Hall. — 
The Bequests of Prescott, Sumner, and Carlyle. — J. L. Sibley. — Dr. 
Justin Winsor. 

THE Library of Harvard College, of which the foundation 
had been laid in the bequest of John Harvard's books, 
grew slowly but steadily during the seventeenth century, mainly 
by gifts from England. It was largely increased by the Tar- 
gums, Talmuds, and Rabbins of Dr. John Lightfoot, the Orient- 
alist ; of whom Gibbon wrote that *' by constant reading of the 
Rabbies he was almost become a Rabbin himself." ^ It was more 
than doubled by the bequest of the books of Dr. Theophilus 
Gale. On April 4, 1689, Samuel Sewall, when on a visit to 
Oxford, recorded in his Diary: "Was shew'd the Library and 
Chapel of Corpus Christi Colledge and the Cellar by Mr. Holland 
a Fellow. Library may be ab* the bigness of Harvard. . . . 
Said Holland treated me very civilly though told him was a 
N[ew] E[ngland] man." ^ The books, whether acquired by 
gift or by purchase, were of a solid and serious kind. They 
had mostly been written by theologians who, like Armado, were 
" for whole volumes in folio." Among the donors were such 
men as the Rev. Mr. Rogers, the founder of Rowley, Massa- 
chusetts, who in his last will professed himself " to have lived 

1 77^*? Harvard University Library, by C. K. Bolton, p. 435 ; Gibbon's 
Misc. PVor^s,ed. 1796, II. 56. 

2 Sewall's Diary, I. 304, 307. 

285 



286 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

and to die an unfeigned hater of all the base opinions of the 
Anabaptists and Antinomians, and of all other frantic dotages 
of the times that spring from them." In the same solemn 
document he *' protested against the general disguisement of 
long, rufiian-like hair." ^ The age of the Restoration and of 
Queen Anne came and went by without affecting the Library. 
In 1723 "it contained no volume from Addison, or his fellows, 
nothing of Locke, Dryden, South, or Tillotson ; Shakespeare 
and Milton had been recently acquired." ^ In the same year 
Cotton Mather recorded that " the scholars' studies are filled 
with books which may truly be called -Satan's library."^ Per- 
haps among them were some of Dryden's Plays and Tillotson's 
Sermons, — equally detestable in the eyes of a rigid Puritan. 
Seventy years later, when Channing entered College, '' the 
young men," we are told, "were passionately given up to the 
study of Shakespeare." ^ What an outcry must Mather have 
raised if he saw the letter which one of the greatest of Har- 
vard's early benefactors, Thomas Holhs, sent with a parcel of 
books from England. " If," he wrote, " there happen to be 
some books not quite orthodox, in search after truth with an 
honest design don't be afraid of them. A public library ought 
to be furnished, if it can, with con as well as pro, that students 
may read, try, judge. ' Thus saith Aristotle,' ' Thus saith Cal- 
vin,' will not now pass for proof in our London disputations."^ 
Bishop Berkeley sent books — Berkeley, to whom belonged 
" every virtue under Heaven " ; Bishop Sherlock, " whose 
style," said Johnson, " is very elegant, though he has not made 

1 Quincy's Llarvard, I. 426. 

2 The Harvard University Library, by C. K. Bolton, p. 436. 
^ Quincy's Harvard, I. 341. 

* Life of IV. E. Chamiing, I. 66. 
^ Quincy's Harvard, I. 433. 



XVII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 287 

it his principal study," and the physician, Dr. Mead, " who 
lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man." 
In January, 1764, the Library was destroyed by fire. Dur- 
ing the vacation the small-pox had broken out in Boston, and 
the General Court of the Colony had fled to Cambridge, just 
as in earlier years in England the Parliament had fled to St. 
Albans and Oxford. The Governor and Council met in the 
Library, while the House of Representatives sat in the room 
beneath. The weather was very cold, and too large a fire, it 
seems likely, was kept up. " In the middle of a very tem- 
pestuous night," writes an eye-witness, '* a severe cold storm of 
snow, attended with high wind, we were awaked by the alarm 
of fire. Harvard Hall, the only one of our ancient buildings 
which still remained, was seen in flames. In a very short time 
this venerable monument of the piety of our ancestors was 
turned into a heap of ruins." ^ Of five thousand volumes only 
a hundred were saved, and of John Harvard's books but a 
single one. It bears the title of The Christian Warfare 
against the Deuill, World, and Flesh. It was printed in Lon- 
don in 1634.- There was grief in the Colony but no despair. 
Two days after the fire the House of Representatives "resolved 
unanimously that Harvard Hall be built at the expense of the 
Province, and granted two thousand pounds to begin the new 
edifice." Subscriptions were made both in America and Eng- 
land. "The Archbishops of Canterbury and York subscribed 
and used their influence in favour of the College." From the 
King and Court there came nothing. Benjamin Franklin gave 
" valuable instruments for the apparatus ; also a bust of Lord 
Chatham " ; Langhorne's Plutarch was sent by Boswell's 

^ Quincy's Harvard, II. 112, 480. 

2 l^ie Harvard University Library, pp. 433, 437. 



288 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

" worthy booksellers and friends," the Messrs. Dilly, at whose 
house Johnson " owned that he always found a good dinner." 
From Barlow Trecothick, the London Alderman, about whom, 
despising him as a Whig, he asked, " where did he learn Eng- 
lish?" came books and thirty pounds in money. Whitefield 
did not forget the day when he had preached beneath the elm 
on the Common, for by his own gifts and those of his friends 
he was a large benefactor. Dr. Heberden sent three guineas^ 
— Cowper's " virtuous and faithful Heberden," " idtimits 
Romanorwn, the last of the learned physicians." 

The Library grew rapidly, and by 1790 could boast of twelve 
thousand volumes. During the Revolutionary War, by a gift of 
the Legislature, it had received four hundred volumes confis- 
cated from Tory refugees." Most of these unfortunate men, it 
is to be hoped, had had time to carry off their books with 
them ; otherwise the King's friends would seem to have been 
but an illiterate set. Eighty years after the great fire, in 
August, 1834, an alarm was raised of a second conflagration. 
A Protestant mob had burnt down a Roman Catholic Chapel 
in a suburb of Boston ; in checking their lawlessness the Gov- 
ernment had shown almost as much laxness as if it had been 
an Anti-Slavery Hall that was attacked. Rumours of retaliation 
spread, for Papists have never been so meek under wrong as 
Abolitionists. On a certain night a bonfire, it was said, was to 
be made of the Library of the College. A body of students 
and graduates was secretly brought together to defend it. "At 
dusk sentinels were stationed at the windows, muskets in hand, 
ready to renew the sounds of war which had not been heard 
within its peaceful walls since the days of 1775. They sent 

1 Quincy's Harvard, II. 113, 491. 

2 Lb. II. 399; Lligher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 63. 




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XVII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 289 

« 

out a waiter to reconnoitre towards Charlestown. He returned, 
saying that he could hear nothing but frogs. At another time 
a horseman came at full speed to announce that one thousand 
Irishmen were on their way to Cambridge." ^ The thousand 
Irishmen were as insubstantial as the four hundred Jesuits 
who, at the time of the Popish Plot, crossed the Straits of 
Dover on dromedaries and exercised every night on Hamp- 
stead Heath. 

The bequest of one hundred thousand dollars (;£ 20,450) 
made to his old College by an eminent Boston lawyer, Christo- 
pher Gore, came at a time when the collection of books had out- 
grown the building in which it was lodged. In 1838 the foun- 
dation was laid of Gore Hall, the present home of the Library. 
Frequent gifts in money, books, and autographs have greatly 
enriched it of late years, while the Corporation of the Univer- 
sity has given it the most liberal support. On it and on its 
branches in the different Schools little less than fifty thousand 
dollars (^10,225) is spent every year,- two thousand pounds 
more than was spent on the Bodleian in 1893."^ American 
scholars have not been unmindful of the debt they owe to their 
Alma Mater. Prescott bequeathed to the Library his books 
and manuscripts relating to the reign of Ferdinand and 
Isabella. Sumner sent it more than fifteen thousand pam- 
phlets. '' He used to say that he preferred having them at the 
Library rather than at his residence, because at the Library he 
could find at once any particular pamphlet he wished to see." 

1 The Harvard University Library, by C. K. Bolton, p. 441. 

2 HigJier Edzicatiojz, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 106. 

^ Under the Copyright Act the Bodleian can claim a copy of every new 
book free of charge. Nearly forty thousand volumes were thus received 
last year, 

u 



290 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

On his death he left it many rare books ; among them an 
Album in which Milton had inscribed at Geneva : — 

" — if Vertue feeble were, 
Heaven it selfe would stoope to her. 

Coelum non animu muto du trans mare 
Curro 

Joannes Miltonius 

Anglus 
Juny io° 1639."! 

Lowell, when he was American Minister to Spain, wrote from 
Madrid : " I buy books mainly with a view to the College 
Library, whither they will go when I am in Mount Auburn, 
with so much undone that I might have done." ^ 

Nay, even from our side of the Atlantic there came a 
scholarly bequest. Carlyle left it a part of his "poor and 
indeed almost pathetic collection of books," to quote the 
words of his will. He adds : — 

" Having vv^ith good reason, ever since my first appearance in Literature, 
a variety of kind feelings, obligations, and regards towards New England, 
and indeed long before that a hearty good will, real and steady, which 
still continues, to America at large, and recognizing with gratitude how 
much of friendliness, of actually credible human love, I have had from 
that country, and what immensities of worth and capability I believe and 
partly know to be lodged, especially in the silent classes there, I have now, 
after due consultation as to the feasibilities, the excusabilities of it, decided 
to fulfil a fond notion that has been hovering in my mind these many 
years; and I do therefore hereby bequeath the books (whatever of them 
I could not borrow, but had to buy and gather, that is, in general whatever 
of them are still here) which I used in writing on Cromwell and Friedrich 
and which shall be accurately searched for, and parted from my other books, 
to the President and Fellows of Harvard College, City of Cambridge, State 
of Massachusetts, as a poor testimony of my respect for that A/ma Mater of 
so many of my transatlantic friends, and a token of the feelings above indi- 
cated towards the Great Country of which Harvard is the Chief School." 

1 The Harvard University Library, by C. K. Bolton, pp. 441-43. 

2 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 242. 



XVII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 291 

As a marginal note '' to Walker's Anarchia anglicana (Vol. 
II. p. 139), where mention is made of the Eikon basilike of 
Charles I., Carlyle has written in pencil : ' Shewing him (had 
it been he, which palpably it was not) to have been the most 
perfect Pharisee, inane Canter, and shovel-hatted Quack that 
ever went about in clear-starched surplice and formula! — Do 
but read it.' " ^ 

One remarkable gift has lately been made by Longfellow's 
heirs — five hundred and eighty- six volumes of American 
Poetry, mainly presentation copies.^ Who is so hard-hearted 
as not to be touched with pity when he reflects on the five 
hundred and odd letters which the unhappy recipient had to 
write in acknowledgment of these cruel presents from his 
brother bards? Compared with such toil as this the Village 
Blacksmith's was a mere trifle. 

Mr. J. L. Sibley, who was Librarian from 1856 to 1877, by 
his constant importunities, added greatly to the coflection 
which he loved so well. '' He begged from his friends the old 
books and pamphlets which lay unused in their garrets. At 
last, he says, ' I acquired the name of being a sturdy beggar, 
and received a gentle hint from the College Treasurer to desist 
from begging, which I as gently disregarded.' "" Some twenty 
years ago he published a book entitled Harvard Graduates. 
His researches ended with the men who took their degrees in 
1689. "There are," wrote Lowell, "ninety-seven of them by 
tale, and as he fishes them out of those dismal oubliettes they 
come up dripping with the ooze of Lethe, like CurU from his 
dive in the Thames, like him also gallant competitors for the 

1 Bibliographical ContribiUions, ed. Justin Winsor, No. 26, p. 6. 

2 Reports, 1892-93, p. 174. 

3 The Harvard University Library, p. 443, 



292 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

crown of Dulness.^ It is the very balm of authorship. No 
matter how far you may be gone under, if you are a graduate 
of Harvard College you are sure of being dredged up again 
and handsomely buried, with a catalogue of your works to keep 
you down. I do not know when the provincialism of New 
England has been thrust upon me with so ineradicable a barb. 
Not one of their works which stands in any appreciable rela- 
tion with the controlling currents of human thought or history, 
not one of them that has now the smallest interest for any liv- 
ing soul ! And yet, somehow, I make myself a picture of the 
past out of this arid waste, just as the mirage rises out of the 
dry desert. Dear old Sibley ! I would read even a sermon of 
his writing, so really noble and beautiful is the soul under that 
commonplace hull ! " ^ In his last Report the old Librarian 
wrote : " The Library has been during more than half of a 
long life the chief object of my interest, and I have given to it 
the best of my ability and attainments, and now my eyes have 
become so dimmed that I am unable to read this Report."^ 

Under this good old scholar's successor, Dr. Justin Winsor, 
the Library has grown with extraordinary rapidity. In the last 
fourteen years the number of books has increased by one 
hundred and fifty-nine thousand, and of pamphlets by one 
hundred and eleven thousand.* He is a born Librarian. To 
extensive learning, a love of books, and the scholar's kindly 
gentle nature, he adds common sense and enthusiasm — a rare 
combination — and great powers of organization. " I try 
never to forget," he wrote, " that the prime purpose of a book 

1 Lowell quoted from memory. It was into Fleet Ditch that the dives 
were made, and Curll was not one of the divers. 

2 Letters of J. R. Lowell, IL 147. 

^ The Harvard University Library, p. 443. 
* Harvard University, by F. Bolles, p. 12. 



XVII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 293 

is to be much read ; though it is equally true that we are under 
obligations to posterity to preserve books whose loss might be 
irrecoverable." ^ In this view of the Librarian's duties he has 
the President on his side, who says in his last report : " How- 
ever troublesome and costly it may be to teach thousands of 
students the abundant use of books, it is the most important 
lesson that can be given them during their student life." - In 
the Harvard Statutes it is written : " The Library is for the 
use of the whole University."^ It is open for readers even on 
Sunday afternoons during term-time. On only six week-days 
in the whole year is it closed — Christmas Day and the five 
great holidays of the Commonwealth, the Twenty-second of 
February (Washington's Birthday), Fast Day (no longer kept 
as a fast). Memorial Day (the Commemoration of the soldiers 
who fell in the war between the North and the South), the 
Fourth of July (Declaration of Independence), and Thanks- 
giving Day (the general thanksgiving for the blessings of the 
year at the end of November) . " Twenty years ago only 
fifty-seven per cent of the students in College used it, now 
over ninety per cent of the upper classmen are borrowers. 
The elective system deserves a part of the credit for this 
increased use of original authorities. The mere note-taking 
or text-book studying student is now the exception where he 
used to be the rule." ^ Undergraduates not only are allowed 
to read in the Library, but those " who have given bonds may 
take out books, three volumes at a time, and may keep them 
one month." ^ To outsiders these privileges are extended. 

1 The Harvard University Library, p. 446. 

2 Reports, 1892-93, p. 36. 
^ Catalogue, p. 33. 

* Harvard University^ by F. Bolles, p. 87. 
^ Catalogue, p. 483. 



294 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Last year nearly two thousand five hundred persons in all were 
registered as borrowers, of whom three hundred and sixty-two 
did not belong to the University.^ " Books have been sent to 
scholars as far south as New Orleans, and as far west as 
Wisconsin and New Mexico. A very general use is made of 
the Library by scholars in all parts of New England."^ It is 
surprising, with such an extensive circulation as this, how small 
is the loss. In his last Report the Librarian says : " Of 
books reported missing since 1883 there are still four hundred 
and fifty-nine unaccounted for" — not fifty volumes a year. 
Almost all of these have disappeared from the shelves contain- 
ing works of reference and certain other collections to which 
all readers have free access. 

While the Library is thus turned into a great school where 
the young student is taught the use of books, learning and 
scholarship are well cared for. From Professor Child I learnt 
of the readiness of the University to provide even at a great 
cost all the works which a scholar needs. For one rare book, 
which he himself required for his English and Scottish Popular 
Ballads, no less than a thousand dollars (;^204) was given. 
The Professor of the newly-founded Chair of Economic His- 
tory, visiting England before he entered on his post, was 
directed to order for the Library many rare and costly works 
and documents which he needed. Every quarter the Harvard 
University Bulletin is issued by the Librarian, in which is given 
a classified list of the principal accessions. Under his direc- 
tion, moreover, is published from time to time a scholarly series 
entitled Bibliographical Contributions. Fifty numbers have 
been already issued, among them Principal Books relating to the 

1 Reports, 1892-93, p. 173. 

2 The Harvard University Library, p. 447. 



XVII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 295 

Life and Works of Michaelangelo, with Notes, by C. E. Norton ; 
The Bibliography of Ptolemy s Geography, by Justin Winsor ; 
The Dante Collections in the Harvard College and Boston 
Public Libraries, by W. C. Lane ; A Bibliogj^aphy of Persius, 
by M. H. Morgan. How good a thing it would be if at 
Oxford some of the money, too often wasted so far as learning 
is concerned on scholarships and prize fellowships, were spent 
in training young scholars in an exact knowledge of literature ! 
What excellent work might be done by them in the Bodleian in 
preparing, under the guidance of learned men, a series of 
bibliographies such as these ; or in gathering and arranging 
material for the use of the editor of our great English Dic- 
tionary ! 

In the course of fifty years the collection of books has again 
outgrown the building in which it is lodged, in spite of the 
addition of a wing and of the creation of several Departmental 
Libraries. The number of readers, moreover, has so largely 
increased, that sitting room can scarcely be found for the 
undergraduates, while for men of learning a quiet place of 
study is greatly needed. He who has been used to work in 
one of the alcoves in Bodley, where he was never crowded and 
where his tired eyes could get rested as they looked down on 
the pleasant lawn of Exeter College far below, would study 
with reluctance in Gore Hall. However, with the abundant 
liberty which is given to a scholar of borrowing books, almost all 
the learned work is done outside the building in private houses. 
The Librarian, in a Report written in November, 1892, spoke 
strongly of the need of enlargement. " I have in earlier 
Reports," he said, " exhausted the language of warning and 
anxiety in representing the totally inadequate accommodations 
for books and readers which Gore Hall affords. Each twelve 



296 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. xvii. 

months brings us nearer to a chaotic condition." ^ These 
warnings, I conjecture, were addressed not to the Corporation, 
but to the rich citizens of the Commonwealth in general. It 
was for them to add to the permanent foundations of Harvard. 
The warnings this time did not fall on deaf ears, and for a brief 
space the brightest prospect was opened. In Frederick Loth- 
rop Ames, one of the Fellows of the College, the generous 
benefactor presented himself. Taking into his counsels the 
Librarian and an architect, he planned a noble addition to the 
building. When I was at Harvard Dr. Winsor was full of 
happiness at the glorious prospect which opened before him 
and his beloved Library. " In a moment it was night." The 
warm heart was chilled and the generous hand closed by the 
sudden stroke of death. Out of the ample fortune which he 
left may his heirs soon raise to him that monument which, had 
his life been lengthened by a few brief months, he would have 
raised to himself. 

'^Reports, 1891-92, p. 161. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Government of Harvard. — The Charter. — The Overseers. — The 
Corporation, Church, and State. — The Faculty. — The President. — The 
Professors. — Oxford and Harvard. 

" ^ I ^HE management of Harvard College is in the hands of 
X three separate bodies ; the first of these being the 
Faculty, or immediate government, having the entire discipline 
of the students in its hands ; the second being the Corporation, 
having the management of the funds and revenues of the College, 
and the appointment of instructors, with other duties exercised 
under the supervision of the third body, the Overseers, repre- 
senting the interests of the graduates and of the pubhc at large." ^ 
Of these three bodies the oldest is the Board of Overseers and 
the youngest the Faculty. The President of the College is ex 
officio an Overseer, and President of the Corporation and of 
the Faculty. It was in 1642, six years after the resolution was 
passed to found the College, that the General Court of the 
Colony of Massachusetts Bay placed its government under a 
Board composed of " the Governor and Deputy-Governor, and 
all the magistrates of this jurisdiction, together with the teach- 
ing elders of the six next adjoining towns." These towns were 
Boston and four places which are now reckoned as its suburbs, 
together with Cambridge. The " teaching elders " were the 
ministers of the Church. To them was given the entire control 
of the College property and full powers " to estabHsh all such 

1 Life of George Tickno}-, I. 355. 
297 



298 HARVARD COLLEGE. 



CHAP. 



orders, statutes, and constitutions " as should promote " piety, 
morality, and learning." 

This Body must have been found too large and too much 
scattered " to have the immediate direction of the College," for 
in 1650 the General Court by a Charter " enacted that the 
College shall be a Corporation consisting of a President, five 
Fellows, and a Treasurer or Bursar, who shall have perpetual 
succession, and shall be called by the name of President and 
Fellows of Harvard College." In this they followed the model 
of an English College, where, whenever a Fellowship becomes 
vacant, it is filled up by the votes of the surviving members of 
the Corporate Body, and where, with very few exceptions, the 
President, under whatever title he is known, is elected by the 
Fellows. The Harvard President and Fellows have never had 
that freehold right in their posts which was enjoyed by their 
brethren in England ; neither had they the absolute power of 
appointment, for they had in each case "■ to procure the presence 
of the Overseers and by their counsel and consent to elect." 
They were entitled to appoint and dismiss the officers and 
servants of the College, and to make orders and by-laws, pro- 
vided the said orders and by-laws were allowed by the Overseers. 
By an Appendix to the Charter in 1657 their powers were in- 
creased. The orders and by-laws which they should henceforth 
make were at once to come into effect, though they "were 
alterable by the Overseers." 

"The Charter of Harvard College," said President EUot at 
the Commemoration of 1886, " granted in 1650 is in force to- 
day in every line, having survived in perfect integrity the pro- 
digious political, social, and commercial changes of more than 
two centuries." ^ It is preserved in the Library of the College 

1 Harvard University, s^oth Anniversary, p. 262. 



XVIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 299 

— surely one of the most venerable of documents on the face 
of the earth ; for it is the Charter of the first University founded 
by the money of the people voted in their popular Assembly. 

The first President was Henry Dunster, a graduate of Mag- 
dalen College, Cambridge, and a clergyman of the Church of 
England, " one of the greatest masters of the Oriental languages 
that hath been known in these ends of the earth." Of the five 
Fellows two were Masters of Arts and three Bachelors. Their 
Christian names — there were three Samuels, one Jonathan, and 
one Comfort — seem to indicate that they were Puritans, not 
only by conviction but by birth. 

No important change was made in the government of the 
University till the Rebellion of the Colonies. In 1780, four 
years after the Declaration of Independence, by the Constitu- 
tion which was framed by the new Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts, the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Council and 
Senate of the Commonwealth were made successors to the 
Governor, Deputy-Governor, and Magistrates on the Board of 
Overseers, the President and the ministers of the six churches 
still retaining their seats. By an Act passed in 1810 and modi- 
fied in 18 14 there were added to the Board fifteen laymen; 
while, instead of six ministers there were to be fifteen, no longer 
confined to particular parishes, but chosen from among the 
Congregational churches of the district generally. Both laymen 
and ministers were elected by the Overseers. In 1843 the 
clerical seats were thrown open to ministers of all denomina- 
tions. By the Act of 1851 the Senators ceased to be ex officio 
members of the Board, and seats were no longer reserved for 
the clergy. Thirty members were to be elected by the Senators 
and Representatives assembled in one room. They were divided 
into three classes, one of which was to go out of office every 



300 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

year. Party politics soon cast a taint over the election and 
through it over the University. In 1865 a great measure of 
reform was carried. Henceforth the President and Treasurer 
were to be the sole ex officio members, while the thirty Over- 
seers were no longer to be elected by the Legislature but by the 
Bachelors of Arts of five years standing, the Masters of Arts, and 
the holders of honorary degrees. By a provision in the Act, 
the wisdom of which seems more than doubtful, " no officer of 
government or instruction in the College is entitled to vote." 
The men, that is to say, who have the interests of the Univer- 
sity most at heart, and who know best how to promote them, 
have no voice in the election of this important Board. The 
poll is taken at Cambridge on Commencement Day. Every 
voter must attend in person ; there is no voting by proxy papers, 
as in the election of Members of Parhament in our Universities.^ 
The thirty Overseers are divided into six equal classes, one of 
which goes out of office every year. By a final reform carried 
in 1880, "persons not inhabitants of the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts were made eligible." In the present year six 
Overseers are citizens of outside States. Thus in the course of 
two centuries and a half the fetters of Church and State have 
been first gradually loosened and at last wholly cast away. Not 
a single member of the Corporation or of the Board of Over- 
seers holds a theological degree. " A few years ago five of the 
Overseers were clergymen ; of these, three were Unitarians, one 
Episcopahan, and one Orthodox Congregationalist." ^ At the 

1 The Universities of England, Scotland, and Ireland return nine repre- 
sentatives to Parliament, who, as might be expected from the nature of 
Universities, all vote with the Tory party. 

2 History of Higher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 92. Bishop 
Lawrence, as I am informed while I am correcting the proofs, was elected 
to the Board of Overseers last Commencement (1894). 



XVIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 301 

present time fifteen are graduates in Arts, twelve in Law, and 
three in Medicine.^ The President is a layman, and on the 
Corporation not a single minister has a seat. In both lists are 
conspicuous the names of the great New England families. 
There is an Endicott to take us back to the very foundation of 
the College, to the days of the first Governor of the Colony, 
that stern Puritan who cut the red cross of St. George out of 
the royal colours ; and a Saltonstall whose two ancestors. Sir 
Richard Saltonstall and his son, in the beginning of the Com- 
monwealth stood boldly for civil and religious liberty. In John 
Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams we have brought 
back to our memory the second and sixth Presidents of the 
United States, and the accomphshed Minister to England dur- 
ing the War between the North and the South. In Samuel 
Hoar we have the representative of " that true New England 
Roman," of whom Emerson so finely said : — 

" With beams December planets dart 

His cold eye truth and conduct scanned; 
July was in his sunny heart, 
October in his liberal hand." ^ 

In Bancroft the name of the historian and in Peabody the 
name of the philanthropist live again. There is one man who 
figures strangely on this list. Among the descendants of the 
men who crossed the seas to escape the tyranny of the Stuarts 
is found a Bonaparte ! ^ 

The Overseers appoint forty committees, formed partly from 
their own body, partly from outsiders. Of some of these Com- 

1 Eight of the twelve who have degrees in Law and the three who have 
degrees in Medicine graduated also in Arts. 

2 R. W. Emerson, by O. W. Holmes, p. 214. 
^ He is a grand-nephew of the first Napoleon. 



302 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

mittees the duties are " to visit " the different Departments of 
the University ; others report on the Courses of Instruction. 
I cannot learn that these "visitations " ever take place. There 
is a tradition, I am told, that an Overseer could now and then 
drop in at a lecture, but at the present day the professional 
mind is never thus rudely agitated. The Board has five "stated 
meetings" every year, besides one "annual meeting." The 
Corporation meets on the second and on the last Monday of 
every month. 

The Fellows, even in the early days of Harvard, were not 
necessarily tutors, neither were the tutors necessarily Fellows ; 
in this respect also the founders had modelled their institution 
on the English Colleges. It rarely happened indeed in the 
American Cambridge that the majority of the Fellows were 
engaged in tuition. Whether they were at first required to be 
resident is not clear. At all events, before the end of the 
seventeenth century the obligation had ceased. Thus there 
shortly grew up side by side two rival authorities, the Corpora- 
tion and the tutors. The President presided over both bodies, 
siding, it would seem probable, sometimes with one and some- 
times with the other. "Not until after 1725 did the President 
and tutors assume the authority of an independent Board on all 
subjects of discipline." Even so late as 1785 "the Professors 
were required to exhibit to the Corporation the text-books used 
in the College and give an account of their method of instruc- 
tion." At the beginning of the present century on the Cor- 
poration for the first time there was not a single resident 
Fellow. In 1824 eleven of the tutors, in a memorial, main- 
tained that by the Charter, " the Fellows are necessarily resi- 
dent instructors." Their claim was not allowed by either the 
Corporation or the Overseers ; but to meet the difficulties 



XVIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 303 

which had arisen, " the immediate government " was authorized 
to assume the name of the Faculty of the University.^ The 
powers which they had gradually acquired they not only 
retained but extended. By the increase in their number and 
in their dignity through the rapid foundation of Professorships 
in the early part of this century, they had become too strong a 
body to be slighted. At the present time there are six Facul- 
ties over the eight Schools which constitute the University; 
the College proper, the Scientific School, and the Graduate 
School being all placed under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 
" Each Faculty is composed of all the Professors, Assistant- 
Professors, and Tutors, and of all the Instructors appointed for 
a term longer than one year, who teach in the department or 
departments under the charge of that Faculty." It has full 
power of disciphne, and by a vote of two-thirds of its mem- 
bers can punish a student not only with rustication but with 
expulsion. The President is a member of each Faculty, but 
its chief executive officer is its Dean, " who is appointed by 
the Corporation, with the consent of the Overseers. He is 
responsible for the proper preparation and conduct of its 
business, and makes an annual Report to the President." 
These Reports are published every year, together with one 
by the President, in which he deals with the information and 
recommendations contained in them and with the general con- 
dition of the University. " Each Faculty may delegate any of 
its powers relating to ordinary matters of administration and 
discipline to Administrative Boards, nominated from among 
its members by the President, and appointed by the Corpo- 
ration with the consent of the Overseers." Three such Boards 
have been established, all under the Faculty of Arts and 
1 Higher Educalion, etc., pp. 42, ^t^ ^9- 



304 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Sciences, one for the College, the second for the Scientific 
School, and the third for the Graduate School. This Faculty is 
also divided into twelve Divisions ; and of these Divisions some 
are sub-divided into Departments. For each Division and for 
each Department there is a separate Committee. Thus the 
Division of Ancient Languages, of which the Professor of Greek 
Literature is Chairman, is composed of the Departments of 
Indo- Iranian Languages, presided over by the Professor of 
Sanskrit ; and of the Department of The Classics (Greek and 
Latin) , presided over by the Professor of Latin. " Each of 
these Committees practically decides all questions of instruc- 
tion and honours in its province." ^ There are, moreover, in 
the same Faculty fourteen Standing Committees, which deal 
with such subjects as Admission Examinations, Admission from 
other Colleges, and Fellowships and other Aids for Graduates. 
The discipline of the College outside the Lecture Rooms is 
maintained by the Parietal Board, composed of *' the Proctors 
and the Officers of Instruction who reside in University build- 
ings, or in buildings to which the superintendence of the Uni- 
versity extends." On it there are forty-six members. They 
are under the direction of a Regent, " a University officer who 
exercises a general supervision over the conduct and welfare of 
the students." "It is a tradition of the College that no teacher 
is commanded to do anything ; his work is only suggested to 
him by his superior officers. The controlling Boards, the 
Faculties, the Corporation, and the Board of Overseers never 
assume a mandatory relation to each other, or to the individu- 
als who compose them." " 

The Governing Bodies of all the Schools are united in a 

1 Catalogue, pp. 31, 60; Educational Reviezu, April, 1894, p. 315. 

2 Catalogue, pp. 32, 62; Lligher Education, etc., by G. G. Bush, p. 92. 




< 
> 



XVIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 305 

University Council, whose function is " to consider questions 
which concern more than one Faculty and questions of Univer- 
sity policy." 

"In all Departments of the University, Professorships are 
held without express limitation of time. All officers of instruc- 
tion and government are subject to removal for inadequate 
performance of duty, or for misconduct." It seems neverthe- 
less to have been "generally assumed " till the beginning of the 
present year, that " the tenure of office of Professors was a 
life-tenure." ^ Happily, the course recently taken by the Cor- 
poration in requesting the resignation of two Professors has 
scattered this assumption to the winds. Our great Universities 
have surely suffered enough from these life-tenure men to be 
a warning to the younger countries. At Harvard, so long as 
there is zealous discharge of duty, the Professor's tenure is as 
sure as any tenure can be in this world. Should there be a 
failure through old age, an ample pension will before long, it is 
hoped, be provided. "An alumnus," said the President at the 
Commencement Day Dinner in June, 1889, "has recently 
offered a gift of peculiar acceptability of two hundred thousand 
dollars (^40,899) towards the retiring allowance fund, than 
which no other purpose could be happier."^ "Assistant-Pro- 
fessorships are held for five years, and tutorships for not more 
than three years. At the end of the term of an Assistant- 
Professor or Tutor his connection with the University ceases, 
unless he be reappointed. Lecturers are appointed for not 

1 Catalogue., p. 30; LLarvard Graduates^ Magazine, March, 1894, 

P-443- 

2 Lligher Education, etc., p. 104. Dr. George M. Lane, Pope Professor 
of Latin, who resigned his office last spring, has received " a retiring allow- 
ance of three thousand dollars (^{^613) a year." Harvard Graduates^ 
Magazijie, March, 1894, p. 530. 

X 



306 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

more than one year. Instructors are appointed for such terms 
as convenience may require." There is great merit in this 
system. In any case where incompetency is shown, far less 
moral courage is required in the Governing Body to let an 
appointment lapse by course of time than to bring it to an 
end by dismissal. 

" A visitor from Europe," writes Mr. Bryce, " is struck by 
the prominence of the President in an American University 
or College, and the almost monarchical position which he 
sometimes occupies towards the Professors as well as towards 
the students. Far more authority seems to be vested in him, 
far more to turn upon his individual talents and character, 
than in the Universities of Europe. Neither the German Pro- 
Rector, nor the Vice-Chancellor in Oxford and Cambridge, 
nor the Principal in a Scottish University, nor the Provost of 
Trinity College in Dublin, nor the head in one of the Colleges 
in Oxford or Cambridge is anything like so important a per- 
sonage in respect of his office, whatever influence his individ- 
ual gifts may give him, as an xA.merican College President. In 
this, as in not a few other respects, America is less republican 
than England. . . . No University dignitaries in Great Britain 
are so well known to the public, or have their opinions quoted 
with so much respect, as the heads of the seven or eight lead- 
ing Universities of the United States." ^ Among the seven or 
eight heads President Eliot undoubtedly holds the first place. 
He holds it, not only as the President of the first University 
on the American continent, but also by reason of his own 
great quahties. He is a born ruler of men. A distinguished 
American historian, speaking to me of the powers which he 
has shown during his five and twenty years of office, both in 

^ The American Cotfwiomvealik, 2d ed., II. 548-49. 



xviii. HARVARD COLLEGE. 307 

governing and in organizing, said : '' He would have made an 
admirable President of a great Railway Company or of the 
United States." Six months after he was appointed Lowell 
wrote of him : " Our new President of the College is winning 
praise of everybody, 1 take the inmost satisfaction in him, and 
think him just the best man that could have been chosen. 
We have a real Captain at last." ^ His father for eleven years 
had been Treasurer of the College. His grandfather had 
founded the Chair of Greek Literature. His uncle, on his 
mother's side, the father of Professor Charles Eliot Norton, 
that graceful and accomplished scholar, the editor of Lowell's 
Letters, had held the Chair of Sacred Literature. He him- 
self graduated at Harvard, and was for some time Assist- 
ant-Professor of Mathematics and Chemistry. Later on he 
was placed at the head of the Department of Chemistry in 
the Scientific School. Resigning this post, ten years after 
graduation he went to Europe, where " he spent two years in 
the study of Chemistry, and in acquainting himself with the 
organization of public institutions in France, Germany, and 
England." ^ He returned to America to fill the Chair of 
Chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not 
having yet had his fill of learning, he once more returned as a 
student to Europe. In September, 1868, the President of Har- 
vard retired, and Mr. Eliot, who was in his thirty-fifth year, 
was appointed his successor by the Corporation. Among the 
Fellows there was, I was told, one man of great insight and 
great influence, who had discovered the young Professor's 
extraordinary powers, and who convinced his colleagues of his 
pre-eminent fitness for the post. The Overseers apparently 
wished to follow in the old course, and to have the choice fall 

1 Letters of J. L\. L.owell, II. 58. ^ LLigher Education, etc., p. 220. 



308 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

on some elderly man, distinguished rather by his learning 
than by his strength of character and all the high and rare 
qualities of a ruler. At all events they refused their " consent." 
The Corporation elected him a second time, and a second time 
the Overseers vetoed the election. After an interregnum last- 
ing more than seven months they at last yielded. On May 19, 
1869, Mr. Eliot became President of Harvard College, and 
the College was at once launched on its great and rapid course 
of the most glorious prosperity. 

How different is his position from that held seventy years 
ago by his predecessor, Dr. Kirkland, whose office, according 
to Lowell, " combined, with its purely scholastic functions, 
those of accountant and chief of poHce ! For keeping books 
he was incompetent (unless it were those he borrowed), and 
the only discipline he exercised was by the unobtrusive pres- 
sure of a gentlemanhness which rendered insubordination to 
him impossible."^ The President of our days is a great 
power ; he surveys the whole machine of the rapidly growing 
University, and adjusts it to the needs and changes of the 
times and to the advances of scholarship and science. " He 
has to preside at the meetings of the Corporation and to act 
as the ordinary medium of communication between the Cor- 
poration and the Overseers, and between the Corporation and 
the Faculties. He has to make an annual report to the Over- 
seers on the general condition of the University. He has to 
preside on public academic days ; to preside over the several 
Faculties ; to direct the official correspondence of the Uni- 
versity ; to acquaint himself with the state, interests, and wants 
of the whole institution ; and to exercise a general superin- 
tendence over all its concerns."- How admirably President 

1 Literary Essays, 1890, I. 84. ^ Catalogue, p. 29. 



XVIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 309 

Eliot has done his work is shown by the extraordinary growth 
of Harvard in the last twenty-five years. Part of this growth 
is due to that great reform which, three years before he entered 
on office, established a government of the University, by the 
University, for the University. Part is due to the sound 
scholars and ardent workers among the senior Professors, who, 
even longer than he, have been steadily advancing the highest 
interests of Harvard. Much is due to the younger men whom 
he helped to choose, and who have so well supported him in 
all his great measures. But when all is deducted there still 
remains a noble balance. Much will be forgotten ; but in far 
distant years Harvard men will still talk of the Age of the 
Great President. In the quarter of a century in which he has 
held office, the number of students under the Faculty of Arts 
and Science has increased from six hundred and thirty-four 
to two thousand one hundred and eighty-eight, and of students 
in the whole University from eleven hundred and twelve to 
three thousand one hundred and fifty-six.^ 

The revenue, which at the beginning of the period was two 
hundred and seventy thousand dollars (^i^ 55,2 13) is now one 
million and forty-seven thousand (;£ 214,108) ; while the aid 
given every year in money to poor students has grown from 
twenty-five thousand dollars (^^ 5 1 1 1 ) to eighty-nine thousand 
(^18,199). Twenty-four new buildings have been erected 
at a cost of two million two hundred and fourteen thousand 
dollars (^452,757), and as I am writing fresh piles are rapidly 
rising.^ Romam lateriiiam invenit, marmoream reliquit. 

1 I do not include the three hundred and forty-six students who attend 
the Summer School — a school which has been called into existence in this 
period. 

'^ Llarvard University, by F. BoUes, pp. 12, 98-101 ; Catalogue, 
P- 536. 



310 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Such a constitution as this where, according to the strict 
letter, the Overseers in so many matters have an absolute veto 
over the votes of the Corporation, where the Corporation has 
an unlimited control over the Faculty, and where the power of 
the President is so small would seem unworkable in a great 
University. Like the English constitution, it moves easily by 
the combined forces of wise custom and common sense. The 
Overseers, who are the stronghold of academic conservatism, 
never push their rights to the point of obstinacy, and the Cor- 
poration has long worked in harmony with the Faculty. It is 
only in matters of general policy that the Overseers make their 
power felt ; and even in these they never long oppose the Cor- 
poration and a united Faculty. When the Faculty is divided, 
then they have been known to side with the minority. A few 
years ago, for instance, a proposal to institute a " Three Years' 
Course," which was supported by a considerable majority of 
the Faculty, was vetoed by the Overseers, mainly, I believe, 
under the influence of a few of the ablest Professors. They 
have been described at Harvard as " our House of Lords, 
whose main business it is to act as a drag on progress." They 
are perhaps chiefly useful as a means of getting money. They 
are generally chosen from among the most influential and 
wealthy New England families. Their official position increases 
the interest in the University which they would naturally feel as 
graduates, and they not only themselves often make splendid 
donations, but they stir up the liberality of their friends. They 
everywhere preach the gospel of endowment. Though the 
appomtment of the Professors and other teachers nominally 
belongs to the Corporation, under the approval of the Over- 
seers, it is by the Faculty in each branch and the President 
acting together that every vacancy is filled up. The name that 



XVIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 311 

he in concurrence with them submits to the Corporation, and 
through them to the Overseers, is ahvays accepted. No better 
mode of appointment could be devised. With the men most 
competent to judge of a teacher's merits and who have most at 
heart the welfare of their own School, acting with the Presi- 
dent, the choice Hes. Jobbing and favouritism seem unknown. 
Not a breath of suspicion ever reached me. 

By the side, therefore, of the two powers recognized by the 
Charter, two others have gradually grown into great importance 
— the President and the Faculty. The President, it is true, 
from the first belonged to both the original Governing Bodies, 
being a member of the Overseers and presiding over the Cor- 
poration ; but he has, as it were, two persons, one in which he 
is a member of these bodies, and one in which he is an inde- 
pendent power. In this second position he has no absolute 
authority, but he rules hke a wise constitutional monarch of the 
earlier type, who, keeping within the lines of the constitution, 
nevertheless was a real and strong governor. In every measure 
theoretically the President can be overruled first by the Corpo- 
ration and next by the Overseers, but practically in almost every 
measure connected with discipline and instruction he has his 
own way, so long as he is supported by the Faculty. If he 
may justly be compared to a King or a President of a RepubHc, 
it is to a King like WiUiam III., or to a President like Lincoln, 
each of whom was his own Prime Minister. The Faculty 
exists by the vote of the Corporation and the Overseers, and 
by their vote could theoretically be abolished. Nevertheless, 
as I have shown, it has gained a position of great authority 
and stability. With the management of the property of the 
University, the Faculty has nothing directly to do, that falling 
within the province of the Corporation. They leave it mainly 



312 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

to the Treasurer, who by virtue of his office is a member of 
the Board. 

In nothing does Harvard differ more thoroughly from Oxford 
than in the perfect organization which exists in her army of 
teachers. In Oxford the teachers are divided into two main 
bodies, entirely independent of each other and under no central 
government — the University Professors and the College Tutors. 
Over the Professors scarcely any control exists ; they rival the 
Cyclopes in their independence. The tutors are governed each 
by the Corporation of his own College. Of this Corporation he 
is commonly a member. The Colleges are twenty in number.^ 
To the Professors and Tutors must be added the University 
Readers/ who are under a special Board ; the Assistants and the 
Demonstrators in the Museum who are under the control of 
their Professors ; and the teachers of the Unattached Students 

— the students, that is to say, who are undergraduates of the 
University, but are not members of any College. In all the 
confusion of such a system as this, if system it can be called, 
there is a great waste of labour and of money, and an unfair 
inequality of payment. There are, or there have been till lately. 
Professors of great learning who have lectured to empty benches 

— I might say to empty chairs ; for, unable to face the forlorn 
look of the lecture- rooms, they have given their instruction in 
their own studies. Even there there has been an appearance 
of vacancy. On the other hand, there are Tutors who, never 
failing to draw together a large number of students, are never- 

1 I exclude Keble, for it is not a College in the sense in which the word 
has always been used at Oxford. It is governed by a Board of outsiders. 
Neither do I reckon the two Halls. 

2 They, roughly speaking, answer to the Assistant-Professors, but they 
are independent of the Professors. In some departments indeed there is 
only a Reader and no Professor. 



Xviil. HARVARD COLLEGE. 313 

theless miserably paid for their work, and see no sure opening 
before them of advancement. In our army of learning there 
is no Field-Marshal's baton in every soldier's knapsack. 
There is no clear and well-marked path of promotion, on which 
a young man can with confidence set his foot, sure that high 
merit will in time bring him to a high position. However able 
he may be, he has chance fighting heavily against him. The 
learned author who is at present throwing a stream of light on 
the reign of the first two Stuarts and of the Commonwealth, 
skilled though he is as a teacher, has never been made a Tutor 
in the College, or a Professor in the University, which he so 
greatly adorns. From the College at the beginning of his career 
he was shut out by religious intolerance, just as from the same 
College another distinguished student and teacher, many years 
later, was thrust forth. From a University Chair he has been 
excluded mainly through the absence of organization in the staff 
of teachers. He is by no means a solitary example. Mr. Free- 
man was not made Professor of History until he was too old to 
learn the teacher's art ; Mr. Froude, when he succeeded him, 
had passed the Psalmist's limit of three-score years and ten. 
The two distinguished scholars who have recently been raised 
to the Chairs of Greek and Latin, in a wealthy and properly 
organized University would have been made Professors twenty 
years earlier. So often does it happen in Oxford that men are 
not promoted till they are past their prime, that not uncommonly 
a Professor's salary is looked upon, not as wages, but a reward. 
Little surprise is caused by the nomination of a man from whom 
fresh work can hardly be expected. That he has done good 
work is, with many, a full justification of his appointment. It 
is his claims, and not the claims of the students, that are 
examined. His well-earned pension as a hard and successful 



314 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

worker in the field of learning is to be provided at their expense. 
Through the whole of the University far too much is spent in 
rewards and far too httle in wages. Were the wealth of the 
foundations more wisely used, teachers would be more fairly 
remunerated, and learned men and students of nature, who 
may have no gift for teaching, would be able to count on a 
decent maintenance whilst they laboriously advanced the boun- 
daries of knowledge. In Harvard, provision for such men as 
these is as yet but very imperfectly made. The millionaire 
who shall endow research has not as yet appeared on the stage 
of the New England Cambridge. ' Perhaps he is within the 
prompter's call. 

It is in the organization of the great body of teachers that 
Harvard excels. An undergraduate who greatly distinguishes 
himself, after taking his degree, with the help of a scholarship, 
if he is a poor man, will continue his studies in the Graduate 
School or in some foreign university. In due time he joins the 
staff of teachers as a Lecturer, Demonstrator, or Assistant. His 
appointment is but for one year. In all likelihood it will be 
continued if he shows his fitness for the post. If he does not, 
he is weeded out while he is still young enough to seek his living 
elsewhere. The University is not saddled with an incompetent 
teacher, who, as sometimes happens in our Oxford Colleges, is 
kept on through pity, to the great injury of the students. He, 
however, who successfully passes through this period of proba- 
tion may hope before long to become an Instructor or a Tutor 
with a longer engagement ; and, later on, an Assistant-Professor 
with much higher pay and an engagement for five years. At 
last he arrives at the full Professorship. He can rise no higher, 
unless he is made President ; but with length of service and with 
merit his salary increases up to a certain limit. The average 



XVIII. HARVARD COLLEGE. 315 

age at which a man becomes full Professor is thirty-five years. 
If in any of these grades of advancement there is no vacancy 
in Harvard, an able teacher may count on receiving a " call " 
from some other University. Should he there greatly distinguish 
himself, he is scarcely less sure, when a vacancy does occur, to 
be recalled to his old College. The chance of promotion has 
greatly increased of late years, not only by the foundation of 
other seats of learning, for each of which a whole staff of Pro- 
fessors is needed, but moreover by the rapid growth in all 
the chief departments of the University. This has indeed gone 
on by leaps and by bounds. In the last twenty-five years the 
number of students, as I have said, has increased by more than 
two thousand. Instead of forty-eight Professors and Assistant- 
Professors there are now one hundred and eighteen, and instead 
of :hirty- three Tutors, Instructors, Demonstrators, and Assistants 
there are now two hundred and four. Twenty-five years ago 
there were in all eighty-one teachers ; they now number three 
hundred and twenty-two. This augmentation is still going on. 
This year there are eighteen more Professors and Assistant- 
Professors than there were two years ago, while the lower ranks 
of teachers have in the same short time been increased by fifty- 
one.^ 

In the method which is followed when a vacant Chair has to 
be filled up or a new Chair is created. Harvard, in common, I 
believe, with American universities in general, sets us an excel- 
lent example. No application is made for the post by a crowd 
of eager candidates ; no testimonials are sent in — testimonials 
in which one side of the shield only is shown, in which truth so 
often is divided from falsehood by the thinnest of partitions. 

1 Ha7-va7-d University, by F. Bolles, p. 12; Catalogue, 1891-92, p. 454; 
lb. 1893-94, p. 536. 



316 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap, xviii. 

The members of each Faculty have made themselves acquainted 
with the merits of the most eminent teachers in other seats of 
learning ; should Harvard herself not furnish the right roan, 
they know where he is to be found. He is offered the post ; 
he is not exposed to the loss of dignity which invests a suitor. 
One man is honoured by the selection which is made of him ; 
none are wounded in their feehngs by being passed over. The 
selection is not confined to citizens of the United States. Two 
years ago two new Chairs were founded at Harvard, ore of 
Economic History, the other of Experimental Psychology. To 
fill them an invitation was sent across the Canadian border to 
an Oxford Master of Arts, a Professor in the University of 
Toronto, and across the Atlantic to a German Doctor of Phi- 
losophy, a teacher in the University of Freiburg. 

How happy would a University be where, with a perfect sys- 
tem of subordination by which merit is sure of recognition, 
should be combined the social hfe and the friendly intercourse 
and all the opportunities for the interchange of thought and 
knowledge which are found in every one of our Oxford Col- 
leges. Each one of them is the gathering-place, the home, of 
a small knot of learned men. Each of the Common-Rooms 
is a centre of kindly feeling and hospitality. Of these we have 
twenty ; Harvard has not one. It will be easier for Oxford to 
take to herself all the good that there is in the Harvard system, 
than for Harvard to add to her vigorous and admirable organi- 
zation all that charm and pleasantness of life which make an 
Oxford man's College scarcely less deaf to him than Oxford 
herself. By an Act of Parliament the one reform can be 
in great part effected ; the other could only come about by 
the slow changes of long years. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Graduate Schools in Oxford and Cambridge. — Respuhlica Literatorum. — 
American Students in English Universities. — The Old Home. 

THE Senate of our English Cambridge, I read, has issued 
a report in favour of graduate study. It is proposed 
" to establish two new degrees, those of Bachelor of Letters 
and Bachelor of Science, open to graduates either of Cam- 
bridge or of other ' recognized ' universities, who shall have 
given evidence that they have pursued at Cambridge, for at 
least one year, a course of advanced study or research, and 
shall also have presented an original dissertation for approval 
by the board of studies." I hope that this scheme will be not 
only adopted but greatly enlarged, and that in an amended 
form it will be transferred to Oxford. The Schools of Arts, 
Natural Science, History, Law, Medicine, and Theology, in 
fact, of all that is taught, should be equally opened to these 
graduates, and the higher degrees in each Faculty should be 
conferred on those who deserve them. The day perhaps is 
far distant when at Oxford and Cambridge the Master's degree 
shall no longer be given as a matter of course, after a certain 
lapse of time, and on the payment of a certain sum of money. 
In Oxford a beginning has been made with the degrees in Law. 
I have the satisfaction of knowing that no one possessed of 
an ignorance equal in amount to that which I had when I 
took the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor would have the least 
chance of gaining these distinctions now. With these graduate 

317 



318 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

Students the first step in reforming the Master's degree might 
very properly be made. Their fitness for it should be tested 
either by examination, or — which is far better — by some 
piece of original work. The residence which is proposed of 
one year — of five and twenty weeks, that is to say — seems 
much too short. Among the '' recognized universities" all 
should be recognized which are worthy of recognition, whether 
they belong to one of our colonies, or to a foreign land. That 
Respublica Literatoriun, that great Commonwealth of Scholars 
to which Bodley dedicated his noble Library, should not be 
bounded and divided by seas, rivers, and mountains, and all 
the limits which part nation from nation. For its citizens no 
passports should be needed, and no letters of naturalization 
should be required. In every university the scholar should 
find his home ; in every seat of learning he should have his 
right of domicile. Like the Roman State, this commonwealth 
should extend over the whole civilized world, and its citizen- 
ship should be obtained, not by birth, but with a great sum — 
the toil of years. Wherever the standard of learning is on a 
level with ours, the graduates of that university, when they 
come to study with us, should hold the same rank as they had 
held at home. The Bachelor of Arts from Harvard or Yale 
should at Oxford or Cambridge wear the Bachelor's gown. If 
he disgraced it by idleness or misconduct, he should at once 
have it stripped from his shoulders. He should wear it on 
sufferance, but on a noble and generous sufferance. The gra- 
duates who came from the inferior seats of learning, whether 
English or foreign, might very properly be placed in an inferior 
position till they had gone through a certain amount of study. 
This is done at Harvard. I was told of a young Bachelor of 
Arts from one of the Canadian universities who would have 



XIX. HARVARD COLLEGE. 319 

had to enter as a Senior had he not appealed to the high 
honours which he had taken in his final examination. Even the 
undergraduates, who, at the rate of about fifty a year, flock in 
there from other universities, do not, by any means, altogether 
lose whatever standing they had already acquired. They go 
before the Committee on Admission, who, measuring the work 
which they had hitherto done and the position which they had 
held '' by Harvard standards," determine in which of the four 
Classes they shall each be placed.^ Almost all of them, I was 
told, would be admitted " a year short." A Senior, that is to 
say, would be reckoned as a Junior, a Junior as a Sophomore, 
and a Sophomore as a Freshman. Those, however, who come 
from Yale, and perhaps from one or two other Universities, are 
not thus degraded. 

I hope that the day is not far distant when the never-failing 
stream of American students which, like the Gulf Stream, sets 
eastwards, shall be diverted from Germany and flow towards 
England ; when the graduate of Harvard and Yale and of many 
another University shall wear the gown in the Colleges of Oxford 
and Cambridge, and tread the cloisters which were trodden by 
their forefathers. Towards England, the mother-country, the 
Old Home, the land of the Pilgrim Fathers, whose towns, 
streets, rivers, fields, hedge-rows, lanes have by poetry, history, 
biography and fiction been made scarcely less dear and scarcely 
less famihar to the gentle reader than his own New England, 
this stream would surely naturally set. How these scholars 
have loved " this little world, this precious stone set in the sil- 
ver sea, "this dear, dear land," in spite of our coldness, in spite 
of our unkindness, in spite of our arrogance, in spite of all the 
sufferings of the War of Independence, in spite of the insolence 

^ Harvai'd University, by F. Bolles, p. 53. 



320 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

which brought on the War of i8 12, in spite of the loud applause 
given by the classes, though not by the people, to the Southern 
slaveholders in their cruel struggle against liberty and the 
Union, in spite of the insults offered to the Northern patriots, 
to a man like Lowell with his warm and generous heart, as if 
the army in which fell his three nephews (" the hope of our 
race ") and his three cousins were " an army officered by tai- 
lors' apprentices and butcher boys." ^ The wrong, I know, has 
not been all on one side ; arrogance has of old been met with 
arrogance, insolence with insolence, and wrong-doing with 
wrong- doing. The blundering selfishness of the American 
nation has brought, and is still bringing, misery to many a poor 
EngUsh home, by destroying that twice-blessed freedom of 
trade which blesseth him that gives and him that takes ; that 
freedom which everywhere alike gives the poor man his bread, 
not only in greater abundance but all '' the sweeter because it is 
no longer leavened with a sense of injustice." The ungenerous 
treatment of our authors, men who have spread knowledge 
and happiness broadcast through their land and have been 
robbed of their reward, though not so bad as it had so long 
been, still goes on. Nevertheless the balance of wrong-doing 
— if the balance of the last hundred and twenty years should 
now be struck — lies heavily against us. Yet in spite of all 
this, how dear England is to many and many an American ! 
Though they never seem to forget that they are with foreigners 
when in our company, while we so easily forget that we are 
with foreigners when in theirs, nevertheless in New England, 
among people of any education, there is a far more friendly 
feeling towards England and the English than there exists 
among us towards America and the Americans. How can they 

1 L.etters of J. R. L.07i<ell, II. 1 1, 159. 



XIX. HARVARD COLLEGE. 321 

help loving the land not only of their forefathers, but of their 
own day-dreams and their imagination ; the land peopled for 
them by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Clarendon, Pepys, Addison, 
Goldsmith, Bosvvell, Jane Austen, Scott, Macaulay, Dickens, 
and by many another famous writer with that strange host, 
some the children of fancy, others once real men and women, 
but now, having passed through a great author's hands, little 
more than the children of fancy ; some so odd, some so full of 
humour, some so tender and pitiful, some so rough and master- 
ful, some so wise and lovable, some so foolish and no less lova- 
ble ? This is the land of the Temple Garden, where Somerset 
and Richard Plantagenet plucked the red rose and the white, 
and of Brick Court hard by where, bewailed by the poor and 
the outcast, Oliver Goldsmith died ; of Clement's Inn, where 
Falstaff and Shallow heard the chimes at midnight ; of West- 
minster Abbey, where the Spectator looking upon the tombs of 
the great felt every motion of envy die in him ; of Westminster 
Bridge, where Wordsworth saw " a sight so touching in its 
majesty " ; of the little Chapel in the Tower ; of Fleet Street, 
" the most delightful scene in the world," more delightful, John- 
son and Boswell thought, than Tempe, and of Charing Cross 
" with its full tide of human existence." It is the land of the 
cathedrals and castles ; of the old-fashioned inns which still 
help to form " the feUcity of England " ; of Addison's Walk 
and the Bodleian ; of the silver Thames and the sedgy Severn ; 
of the beautiful country life, the parks, the lawns, the ivy- 
mantled towers each with its peal of bells, the green fields, the 
winding lanes. "The country," wrote Ticknor, "is much more 
beautiful than I thought any country could be." ^ A New 
England minister has recorded how eighty years ago he was 

1 Life of George Ticknor, I. 56. 



322 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

gazing at a print-shop, when two men who were passing along 
stopped to look at a picture in the window. " ^ Do you not 
recognize it?' said one of them to his companion. 'Oh yes,' 
was the reply ; ' it is Guildhall.' I had some feeling akin to 
sublimity in the thought that I was standing so near two gentle- 
men at once who had travelled to London and seen Guild- 
hall." ^ "What shall I say of London," wrote Longfellow; 
" of my pilgrimage to Temple Bar, Eastcheap, and Little 
Britain? Indeed, I know not what to say."- ''My heart 
bounded when I caught the first sight of England," an ancient 
dame said to me. "I love every inch of it," said another lady. 
I asked a distinguished scholar, a man sprung of the best New 
England stock, whether an American was touched by Shake- 
speare's glorious praise of England. "Your forefathers," I said, 
"would have felt it as Englishmen." With his gentle and 
thoughtful smile, he replied that there were roots in him which 
went down deeper in England than even in his own country. An 
old country lawyer who had never crossed the Atlantic despised 
all mankind but the English stock. We were talking one day 
of the Southern States. " It was not unhkely," I said, "that 
in some of them the negroes by enduring the climate better 
might in the end supplant the descendants of the EngHsh." 
He scornfully rephed : " I don't know anything but God 
Almighty that can kill an Anglo-Saxon." The great-grand- 
fathers of these New Englanders before the fatal shot was 
fired at Concord Bridge would have felt the proud boast, — 

" That Chatham's language was their mother tongue, 
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with their own." 

1 Life of Benjamin Silliman., II. 150. 

2 Life of H. W. Lo}igfellow, I. 170. 



XIX. HARVARD COLLEGE. 323 

Their children now say with Wordsworth : — 

" We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold 
Which Milton held. — In everything we are sprung 
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold." 

" They are islanders," wrote Prescott of us, with all the gene- 
rous enthusiasm of a scholar and, I would fain believe, with 
all the pride of kinship, " they are islanders cut off from the 
great world. But their island is indeed a world of its own. 
With all their faults, never has the sun shone — if one may use 
the expression in reference to England — on a more noble 
race ; or one that has done more for the great interests of 
humanity."^ "They have the proudest history in the world," 
wrote Emerson. "Would to God," said Judge Story, "that I 
could see Westminster Hall, and the Abbey, and the Houses 
of Parliament. A cluster of recollections belongs to them, 
almost unexampled in the history of the world." - Lowell, in 
all " the bitterness (half resentment and half regret) " which 
he felt towards England at the close of the Slaveholders' War, 
could still say : " I know what the land we sprung from, and 
which we have not disgraced, is worth to freedom and civihza- 
tion."^ He added: "We have not a thought nor a hope 
that is not American." But here in his anger he deceived him- 
self. He was never one of those who held that " the felicity 
of the American colonists consisted in their escape from the 
past."'* The past was too much for him; except, indeed, in 
the very heat of the great war it was always with him. Even 

1 Life of IV. H. Prescott, p. 320. 
•2 Life of Joseph Slory, II. 445. 
3 Letters of J. R. Loivell, I. 402. 
* Works of Daniel Webster^ I. loi. 



324 HARVARD COLLEGE, chap. 

American spelling he would not tolerate. " Why do you give 
in to these absurdities? " he wrote to a brother-author who had 
spelt mouldered moldered. " Why abscond into this petty creek 
from the great English main of orthography?"^ Except in 
his own pleasant home in Cambridge, nowhere in his old age 
was he so happy as in England. He returned to it again and 
again. " This is my ninth year at Whitby," he wrote, " and 
the place loses none of its charm for me."^ "There is not a 
corner of England that has not its special charm," he had 
written three years earlier.^ But in earlier days, long before 
his fame, his great position, and his beautiful character and 
scholarly mind had won for him a place among us so high that 
it would have softened even the surliest Yankee and made him 
fond of England, he loved the island for itself. To a friend 
he wrote nearly forty years ago : " I will envy you a little 
your delightful two months in England — and a picture rises 
before me of long slopes washed with a cool lustre of watery 
sunshine — a swan-silenced reach of sallow-fringed river — 
great humps of foliage contrasting taper spires — cathedral 
domes, gray Gothic fronts elbowed by red-brick deaneries — 
broad downs clouded with cumulous sheep." * " Hereditary 
instincts," he told Mr. Leslie Stephen, *' enabled him to appre- 
ciate our Enghsh scenery."^ He was meditating one more 
visit to us when the illness came upon him, from which he 
never recovered. Had he died among us, surely his last 
resting-place would have been in Westminster Abbey. 

What a hold should we get on men of the noblest minds in 
the United States', and through them on their countrymen, did 
we open wide our universities ! What's Germany to them or 

1 Letters of J. R. Loiuell, II. 294. 

2/^.11.421. 3/^.11.356. 4/^,1.300. 5/^.11,^01. 



XIX. HARVARD COLLEGE. 325 

they to Germany ? To England the young students could not 
help coming if a welcome were given them, and if in every 
one of the Arts and Sciences, teaching and opportunities for 
original work were provided worthy of a great university. 
When Oxford and Cambridge have each their great Graduate 
School, a School of men indifferent to honours and unworried 
by examinations, then that blessed time will not be far distant. 
If once we get hold of these young Americans, we will defy 
them to pass through Balliol or Magdalen or New College, and 
not love Oxford and England. Prescott, the evening before 
his death, said of us to a friend : '' What a hearty and noble 
people they are, and how an American's heart warms towards 
them after he has been in England once, and found them out 
in their hospitable homes ! "^ "Each traveller makes his own 
England," writes Dr. Holmes.^ Not altogether so, most gentle 
of Autocrats. We Englishmen can do something towards 
making it for him. We can make him feel that it is not among 
a strange people that he has come; that it is by no waters 
of Babylon that he sitteth himself down. Few men can any- 
where feel more strongly the sense of loneliness than the 
American scholar who knowing nobody wanders through 
England. Those who 

" At the purple dawn of day 
Tadmor's marble waste survey " 

are scarcely more solitary than the young New Englander 
without a friend in the land of his forefathers, and in the land 
of his books. The very words Old Home^ which had so plea- 
sant a sound far off, add to his desolation. He is like a man 

1 Life of W. H. Prescott, p. 442. 

2 R. W, Ejuerson, p. 218. 



326 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

who after the lapse of years comes back to his old College and 
finds nobody who knows him. He sees the new names above 
the doors. Many a New Englander visits the English village 
in which his forefathers lived two centuries and a half ago. 
He wanders about it, thinking how once to those of his name 
there was not a house that would not have been open ; he goes 
into the old church and sits where his ancestors sat ; in his old 
home he is utterly a stranger. He passes through England, 
seeing all its beauties, visiting like a pilgrim many a spot of 
which he had dreamt since the day when books first took hold 
of him, but living in inns and knowing nobody but landlords 
and waiters. Those friends, once so real and still so dear, 
with whom so often in his New England parlour he had laughed 
and wept, in their own homes are for the first time found to be 
shadows. They all "are melted into air, into thin air." Where 
he could love so much he finds no one even to give him a 
hand. '' England," said an American to me, " is a country 
where a foreigner meets with the greatest hospitality and the 
greatest neglect. There is no people so hospitable as the 
English, if you have an introduction to them. If there is the 
tiniest little tag on which to hang hospitality, no one can be 
more hospitable than an Englishman ; but if there is no intro- 
duction, no one can stand more aloof." Our ancient univer- 
sities could so easily provide a noble '^ tag " indeed. What 
ever- widening circles of friendship would in them be formed — 
circles which would in time include hundreds and thousands of 
gentle spirits and cordial hearts on both sides of the wide 
Atlantic ! In Boston, on the walls of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society, hang two swords crossed. They once hung 
above the books in Prescott's library. One of them had been 
worn by his father's father on Bunker Hill, the other by his 



XIX. HARVARD COLLEGE. 327 

mother's father on an EngHsh sloop-of-war which, from the 
river below, cannonaded the patriots. For fifty years and more 
they have been crossed in peace in the gentle seats of learning 
— a symbol, I trust, of that unruffled harmony, that perfect 
good-will, which some day by the help of books, scholars, and 
universities, shall be established between the great and kindred 
nations. 

Before many years have passed by, Harvard in every one of 
her Schools will supply her students with that higher learning 
in search of which they have so long resorted to Europe. 
" Our day of dependence," said Emerson nearly sixty years 
ago, " our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, 
draws to a close." ^ Nevertheless, her young scholars will still 
cross the Atlantic in the same noble quest. It is not only the 
Libraries, the Museums, the Art Collections, the ancient sites 
and monuments of the Old World which will bring them. More 
than for all these, they will come to live for a while in the midst 
of those great floating traditions of learning and mental refine- 
ment, that priceless possession handed down from far distant 
centuries, and ever growing as it passed from one generation to 
another. These traditions well-nigh perished in the severity of 
the Puritans' character and in the prolonged struggle with a 
barren soil and a stern climate. In later years their growth has 
been checked by the swift and victorious march westward over 
a country so rich and fruitful that by the restless ambition which 
it exerted it destroyed that repose in which learning and refine- 
ment are best nurtured. 

While their students must spend some time in Europe, I 
trust that before long many a scholar fresh from Oxford and 
Cambridge will cross the Atlantic to finish his studies in Har- 

1 Works, 1884, 1. 65. 



328 HARVARD COLLEGE. chap. 

vard. More than one hundred years ago that generous bene- 
factor of the College, the old London merchant, Thomas 
Holhs, seeing Oxford and Cambridge closed to the Noncon- 
formists, turned his eyes towards Harvard as the place where 
English ministers might be educated. "To train them up 
in arts and sciences," he wrote, "would be a method to 
correct mean and ignorant explications and applications of 
Scripture, attended with a little enthusiasm ^ too often, which 
narrows that catholic charity among all Christians, recommended 
by the apostles of our Lord Jesus. I should rejoice to hear 
your College was well furnished with Professors in every science 
that young students might be completely instructed in the 
ministry, and our ministers at London might encourage the 
sending such like youth to Harvard College, instead of Leyden 
and Utrecht, our present practice." ^ Happily one part of 
Hollis's wish has at last been fulfilled. In every science the 
University is well furnished with Professors, while there are 
departments in the Graduate School where our best men might 
study with profit. But the greatest profit of all would be the 
residence among a people so like and yet so unlike. Here 
the student of history, political science, and political economy 
might study, as it were, in a great Life-School. Nowhere 
could a man get more quickly or more thoroughly cured of 
what Lowell calls " the English genius for thinking all the 
rest of mankind unreasonable." "There is one thing," he 
adds, " Englishmen always take for granted, namely, that an 
American must see the superiority of England."^ At Harvard 

1 Enthusiasm he uses in the sense which it commonly bore through the 
greater part of last century : " a vain belief of private revelation." 

2 Quincy's Harvard, I. 434. 

3 Letters of J. R. Lowell, II. 405. 



XIX. HARVARD COLLEGE. 329 

" the freshening western blast " would sweep away that and a 
few other msular prejudices besides. Here, too, the young 
student of Oxford or Cambridge would see a great university 
greatly ruled. He would return home loving his own College 
and his own University more than ever, but resolved that so far 
as it in him lay, they shall be still worthier of the love and 
reverence felt for them by their children. 



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Crown Svo, cloth, gilt top, or uncut edges. ^2.00. 



GRANFORD. 

By Mrs. Gaskell. With 100 Illustrations by PIuGH Thomson. Uniform 
with the "Vicar of Wakefield." Cloth, gilt, ^2.00. Also in half calf, 
half morocco, ^5.00; full limp morocco, ^7.00. 



MACMILLAN & CO. - - - NEW YORK. 

3 



^\)t (Cranforti Series* 



Books containing Illustrations by Hugh Thomson. 

OUR VILLAGE. 

By Mary Russell Mitford. With a Preface by Anne Thackeray 
Ritchie, and loo Illustrations by Hugh Thomson. Crown 8vo, gilt, 
or edges uncut. ^2.00. 
^*^ Also an Edition de Ltixe^ limited, Super-royal 8vo, Hand-made 

Paper, uniform with "Cranford." ^14.00, net. 



COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS. 

By W. OuTRAM Tristram. With 214 Illustrations by Hugh Thomson 
and Herbert Railton. This volume is uniform with " Cranford" and 
the "Vicar of Wakefield," "Old Christmas," and "Bracebridge Hall." 
Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt edges, or uncut, with paper label, ^2.00. 

:^*^, Also an Edition de Ltixe, limited, Super-royal 8vo, Hand-made 
Paper, uniform with " Cranford." ^12.50. 



DAYS WITH SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. 

A Reprint from " The Spectator." With 80 Illustrations by Hugh Thom- 
son. Uniform with that artist's editions of "Cranford" and "The 
Vicar of Wakefield." Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt, ^1.50. Also in half calf, 
or half morocco, ^4.00; full polished levant, ^6.00. 

^*^ Large-paper Edition, ^14.00. 



THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 

By Oliver Goldsmith. With a Preface by Austin Dobson, and 182 
Illustrations by Hugh Thomson. Cloth, gilt, ^2.00; half calf, or half 
morocco, $4.00; full crushed morocco, $6.00. 



MACMILLAN & CO. - - - NEW YORK. 

4 






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